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[Life is Feudal] Medieval themed Sandbox MMO *Alpha on Steam now*

September 20, 2014, 6:23 am
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Great citizens of Wangland, I present a new medieval themed MMO - http://lifeisfeudal.com/

Here is the main idea, pulled from the game info section - “Life is feudal” is an indie project of the Hardcore Sandbox MMORPG, set in a Realistic Medieval fictional world.

Right now the game is really janky, being an alpha, and a year away from the MMO part (it is currently being run as 64 player mini test realms).

That being said, I've put about 6 hrs into it already, and all ive done was move some earth around to make space for my own shack, in a player placed/designed/defended/organized village.

FIRST IMPRESSION - The devs are pushing this in the direction of Ultima Online, if it were 3D, and was based on realism with no magic or monsters (altho you can consider some people as monstrous). You can clearly see the genetics of UO in the skill cap and crafting system, which is a good thing. However, they have also pulled the no-target combat from Warband and added the terraforming and ability to shape your surroundings of all the Minecraft clones. So far the server I play on is in the stone age so-to-speak, with people trying to lash together stone tools and shacks, but I can see the future potential.

**Space reserved for proper OP, just getting the word out**
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[Asheron's Call] 15 Years & Running - Private Servers soon

November 3, 2009, 12:10 pm
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GOOD NEWS FOR TYCHO

The payments have finally stopped.
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Official Update from the AC Forums:
As of August 2014, Asheron’s Call and Asheron's Call 2 will no longer charge a subscription fee for players. The last payments will be processed on June 31st, making July the final “paid” month. Note that this means some players will technically receive some portion of July free as a result, as we have decided to absorb the cost and not run partial payments to cover it. Other important information for the transition:
~ After the transition, new accounts can be created with a one-time $10 purchase through our normal sign-up page
~ We will no longer be performing MSN Zone migrations after May 31st (click here for more information regarding MSN Zone Migrations)
~ Any inactive subscriptions that players wish to access after the transition will require a one-time activation fee of $10 via the myaccount website
~ Note that after the transition, help requests will only be available regarding harassment issues or account assistance with the $10 one-time activation purchase.
~ The AC forums will remain up and available

We also wanted to provide an update regarding “community” servers. Our current plan is to offer the first player run server packages and to open up our player run server sub-forums by the end of the year. Our first offering will be a basic AC1 server and client download. We expect the first offering to be light on documentation, as it is intended for enthusiasts with experience in setting up servers and dealing with networking. While set up instructions will be offered on these new sub-forums, this initial offering will be intended to be used in conjunction with the forums to allow the community to begin the process of running servers and creating documentation for that process.



Why should I play Asheron's Call?

Given the age of the game and the dwindling population, that's a legit question and a hard one to answer. The only thing I can tell you is that AC did a lot of things differently from other MMO's. If you need something different from modern "theme park" games or just want to see how things were done back in the day, it's a good game to try.

Here are just a few examples:
  • Original Gameworld - Nowhere will you find an elf, an orc, or a dwarf. The creatures and characters scattered across Dereth are largely unique to the series.
  • No Character Classes - You build the character YOU want to play from a list of available skills.
  • PVP - Considered by many to be one of the best MMO's for PvP mechanics. Play as a PK either on the regular PVE servers or go full time on Darktide, where you can be attacked by anyone, anywhere, anytime.
  • Content - Turbine's regular updates (If you're familiar with the Living Story of Guild Wars 2, you'll understand the idea) from launch in 1999 up until the end of content development earlier this year means there are a lot of things waiting to be done.
  • Open World - 500 square miles of open terrain to explore with no zones and no instances; the only possible exception being dungeons, which are accessed via portals rather than running into them from the open ground. But again, these are not instanced - everyone shares the same dungeon.
  • Rich Lore - A very deep, involving history waiting to be uncovered...explore places packed with history and discovered lost, ancient texts for yourself
  • Randomly Generated Loot - You won't have a ton of people running around with the same epic sword that dropped off some boss somewhere; Quest loot is available but far and away the best loot to be had is randomly generated and dropped by everyday mobs, making everyone's equipment unique.

Assuming I want to try this, how would I go about it?

Purchase the game directly from the website for $9.99 - https://asheronscall.com/en


So what do you mean by no character classes?

It's really just that simple, no character classes. You can, when creating a character, choose from some preconfigured templates if you like. Or, you can delve into the custom creation screens and make your own unique build.

All characters have six "base" characteristics:

Strength - Determines how much you can carry, as well as influencing melee skills
Coordination - Primary stat for archers, but also influences your ability to dodge attacks. Also critical for alchemists and other craftsmen.
Endurance - Determines how much health & stamina you have
Quickness - Determines run speed as well as influencing ability to dodge attacks
Focus - Your mental clarity; a major stat for mages as well as those who wish to use magic items
Self - Strength of spirit; primarily determines the size of your mana pool

All stats start at a minimum of 10 and can go to a max (on creation) of 100. You get 270 attribute points to assign to a new character, meaning you can focus three of them or spread them around. A mage might put focus/self at 100/100 to maximize spellcasting abilities and spread the rest around as needed, while a melee fighter might give Str/Coord that 100/100 instead.


After assigning base stats, you then choose the starting skills that will define your character. Choose an offensive skill (melee weapons, ranged weapons, or some form of magic). There are also trade skills (alchemy, fletching, cooking) as well as tinkering skills that can be used to imbue your items with more powerful attributes. There are also support skills like lockpicking, or mana conversion (critical for any spellcaster as it reduces the mana cost of spells), and defensive skills (melee, missile, magic defense to either evade attacks or resist spells).

Want to be a thundering, raging axe warrior? You can.

Want to be a master of the arcane arts? You can.

Want to be the greatest arrow-slinging chef that ever baked a pie? You can.



Even if you create a total wimp of a character, it's okay. Thanks to the Temples of Enlightenment & Forgetfulness, you can change your stats & skills around later in the game if you really need to.

But what is there to do?

Quests, and lots of them. From simple to epic in scale, it's really hard to say there's "nothing to do" in AC.

If you're not into questing, you can roam the lands, hunting the wilderness to earn your keep. Or you can plop yourself into one of the many dungeons packed with dangerous creatures and slaughter them to level your way to the top.

Man, I'm not used to this old stuff. This game is tough to play.

Well, there are many useful third party applications that run in AC to make things easier for you. Some of them are downright awesome and others are...well, they're bot programs to be blunt. But there's a lot that's been done and outside of unattended macro'ing, Turbine allows it.

Ask in the thread what other people recommend using to find the latest info, as well as to find out where we're at and when we're around.

At the very least, with AC going F2P I will have an active account until the day they shut it down for good. I'm sure others will as well.
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[WOW] WARLORDS OF DRAENOR: New patch "fixes Female Gnome sagging." Wait, what ?

January 13, 2015, 11:45 am
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WARLORDS OF DRAENOR ahoy !



Here's the WARLORDS site: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/warlords-of-draenor/



Patch 6.1 preview: http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/4644-Patch-6-1-Character-Models-Class-Tuning-Hotfixes-Heirlooms-Tab-Twitter-Toggle

Australian servers ! http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/16495451/australian-servers-down-under-10-23-2014

We'll leave this here for now, there's a thread for it in G & T: OVERWATCH trailer http://us.battle.net/overwatch/en/


Go here for the expansion FAQ: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/11514711/World_of_Warcraft_Warlords_of_Draenor_BlizzCon_2013_FAQ-10_30_2013

Q: What are the key features of Warlords of Draenor?
Some of the new content and features of Warlords of Draenor include:
•Explore a Savage World: Explore the hostile world of Draenor, home of the orc and draenei races, as it once existed, and adventure in all-new zones alongside characters central to Warcraft history.
•Build Your Garrison: Construct, command, and expand your own customizable stronghold on Draenor, and gather NPC followers to collect resources and embark on missions on your orders.
•Instantly Upgrade to Level 90: Boost one character of your choosing to be ready to adventure on Draenor, making it easier than ever to enjoy the latest content alongside your friends.
•New Player Character Art: Character models and animations for many of World of Warcraft’s existing playable races are being fully revamped in keeping with the game’s iconically epic style.
•Adventure to Level 100: Reach new heights of power and unlock bonuses to further enhance your abilities on your way to the new level cap of 100.
•…And More: Take on a wide array of Dungeons, Raids, Scenarios, Battlegrounds, Challenge Modes, and more—no matter what kind of content you enjoy, new adventures await.

Q: How does the Garrison work? What kinds of followers and upgrades are available?
To establish a foothold on Draenor and bolster your faction’s defenses against the formidable Iron Horde, each player will need to build and manage their own Garrison, a customizable fortress that serves as your personal base of operations throughout the course of the expansion. As you complete quests and win allies to your cause, your Garrison will expand and you’ll be able to choose which upgrades you’d like to construct from a variety of options. You’ll also meet and recruit NPC allies and followers who will join you at the Garrison, each providing different benefits.

For example, a miner rescued from a dungeon might take up residence and help gather Mining resources. A heroic warrior you quarter might embark upon quests at your command, with a chance to return with valuable treasures. Other characters might provide you with quests that expand upon their own stories or lead you to valuable assets in your campaign.

When it comes time to upgrade your Garrison, you might choose to build a Barracks to send more followers on missions simultaneously, an Inn to provide new recruits, or an Infirmary to speed up injured followers’ recovery time between assignments. You may instead decide to build a Smithy and recruit a Blacksmith to research new plans and craft valuable resources (such as those with daily cooldowns). You’ll also be able to invite friends to visit your Garrison to trade resources and see how your home base stacks up against their own.

Q: What new zones will I explore on Draenor?
The expansion sends players to Draenor as it existed before it shattered into the realm World of Warcraft players know as Outland—and while some of the names of these places might be familiar, we’re building them all from scratch for the expansion.
Here’s a breakdown of Draenor’s zones:
•Frostfire Ridge: Across snow-covered wastes and beneath towering volcanoes, heroes of the Frostwolf clan and the Horde unite to repel invaders from their homeland.
•Shadowmoon Valley: Amid rolling moonlit hills, the draenei at the holy temple of Karabor unite with the Alliance in a desperate fight for survival against the Iron Horde and Shadowmoon clan.
•Gorgrond: Deep within the desert canyons of Gorgrond, an arsenal of massive siege weapons built by the Blackrock clan is about to be unleashed upon the whole of Draenor.
•Talador: In the shadow of a besieged Shattrath City, the Auchenai Soulpriests actively seek to safeguard the countless draenei souls inside Auchindoun from a terrible demonic threat.
•Spires of Arak: At the height of their power, the regal arrakoa plot atop their high peaks, well out of the reach of the brutal Shattered Hand orcs and the wingless outcasts below.
•Nagrand: Among the fertile hills and outcroppings of Nagrand, the bloodied wolf-riders of the Warsong clan remain a threat not to be trifled with.
•Tanaan Jungle: Within the overgrown jungle home of the Bleeding Hollow clan, a Dark Portal is under construction . . . and an Iron Horde army makes grim preparations to conquer Azeroth.

Q: Why are you giving everyone a level-90 character boost?
World of Warcraft is constantly evolving, and these days players engage with the game in a wider variety of ways than ever. Some enjoy the process of exploring the world and leveling up. Others enjoy the challenge of raiding. Many simply enjoy playing with their friends, wherever they may be. One of our primary goals with Warlords of Draenor is to empower WoW players to quickly and easily be able to participate in the content they’re most interested in, and giving everyone a level-90 character upgrade right out of the gate helps make that possible.

One common piece of feedback we’ve received from new players and those who’ve taken an extended break from the game is that World of Warcraft requires a significant time investment before they’re able to “catch up” and play with high-level friends. Design changes such as speeding up the leveling curve and features like the popular Scroll of Resurrection and Recruit-a-Friend system have proven very popular, but the issues’s only getting more challenging with each patch and expansion we release. By giving players the option to boost a character to be ready for the latest expansion content, we hope to remove some of these entry barriers and make it so anyone can pick up and enjoy Warlords of Draenor right away, no matter how much World of Warcraft they’ve played in the past.

Q: It’s been a while since I’ve played WoW—will I know what to do with a level-90 character?
At the start of the new expansion, players will be thrust into an exciting introductory experience involving a desperate strike against the orc forces on Draenor. During this opening sequence, new and returning players will have an opportunity to get up to speed on the game before diving into their faction’s starting zone content—similar to the Death Knight starting experience in Wrath of the Lich King. We’ve also recently added features such as Proving Grounds, which help players learn how to tank, heal, and deal damage in dungeons in a solo “teaching” environment, to help ease the learning curve and prepare players for battle as quickly, efficiently, and enjoyably as possible.

Q: How will the included level-90 character upgrade work?
In regions where players purchase World of Warcraft expansions, each World of Warcraft account that you upgrade to the Warlords of Draenor expansion will receive one level-90 character boost (to be used once the expansion releases). You don’t need to decide which character to boost immediately. You can also create a level-1 character from scratch and then use the upgrade on that if you wish. The boosted character will also receive a level-appropriate set of gear (along with some other assistance) to make sure you’re set for adventuring. We’ll have more details to share as development continues.
For regions where players do not purchase expansions (including China, Korea, and Taiwan), we’ll have more information to share on our plans in the future. In the meantime, our goal for all regions remains the same—to give players a way to get straight to the action in Draenor.

Q: Why revisit the player races’ art now? Will I recognize myself in the mirror?
As we’ve released new World of Warcraft content and expansions, we’ve received feedback that some of the earlier player character models and animations are no longer measuring up to the quality of the newer races. Because Warlords of Draenor takes players back to the homeland of the Orcs—one of WoW’s original playable races—it felt like a great time to update not just the Orcs, but other playable races that could use a refresh.
We know that many of you already strongly identify with the look of your current character, so we’re dedicating a lot of time and resources to make sure these updates capture each race’s iconic identity and personality. We’re still in the process of determining which races will be available upon the expansion’s release, but our goal is to update all eight of the original World of Warcraft playable races, along with the Draenei and Blood Elves, over the course of the expansion launch and subsequent content updates.

Q: What kinds of bonuses will my character earn on the journey from level 90 to 100?
Warlords of Draenor introduces a new bonus system that rewards players with powerful perks as they level up to the new cap. At every level from 91 to 100, characters will earn a major permanent boost to one of their their key spells and abilities (e.g. a Fire Mage might earn a +50% damage boost to Pyroblast or +30% boost to Scorch). Players will also unlock a new talent tier once they’ve achieved level 100, rewarding each class with three potent new abilities to choose from.

Q: What are the plans for new Dungeons, Scenarios, and Raids?
We’re planning 6 new 5-player dungeons for the launch of Warlords of Draenor, along with a revamped version of the classic Blackrock Spire. One of our goals is to make sure we’re giving players a good mix of “level-up” Dungeons along with some new, unexplored Dungeons to delve into at max level. The expansion will also give players a chance to earn awesome transmogrifiable weapons and other unique rewards in Challenge Mode Dungeons. We’re also planning a wide variety of Scenarios for launch, along with Heroic Scenarios for those who enjoy the extra challenge.

On the Raiding front, we’re planning 2 new raid instances around launch, as well as new world bosses. We’ll also continue to provide players with a wide variety of raiding options. In addition to offering four tiers of difficulty as in Patch 5.4, we're also extending our Flexible Raid scaling technology to Normal difficulty raiding. We’ll have more details to share as development continues.

Q: What challenges await in the world of PvP?
Warlords of Draenor will feature a new world PvP zone that hurls Horde and Alliance players into an epic conflict fighting for control of strategic fortresses on Draenor. This new area will be seamlessly instanced, with the goal of providing better performance and a more balanced PvP experience than was possible in WoW’s earlier world PvP zones. We’re also planning several major PvP-related UI improvements, including updates to help you track and communicate with your team about objectives in Battlegrounds, along with enhancements to Arena and Rated Battleground enemy unit frames designed to relay key information more clearly.

Q: What’s in store for professions?
One of our goals in Warlords of Draenor is to make each of the game’s existing Professions more engaging and integrated into the gameplay. To that end, the Garrison will play a major role in your character’s Professions in this expansion—similar to how your farm was key to the Cooking profession in Mists of Pandaria, only on a much more epic scale.

Q: What can players expect while questing in Draenor?
We received a lot of feedback over the course of Mists of Pandaria about what kinds of quests and world PvE content players enjoy most, and we’re continuing to evolve the questing experience in Warlords of Draenor with that in mind. Our goal is to give players a wide variety of fun and unexpected activities, ranging from the kinds of quests they’re familiar with to new experiences along the lines of the exploration- and event-driven Timeless Isle introduced in Patch 5.4: The Siege of Orgrimmar.

Q: Will you be making any changes to what Stats are available?
One of our goals for Warlords of Draenor is to make the act of finding and collecting loot even more exciting for players. With that in mind, we’re adding some fun new stats to gear, such as Movement Speed and Cleave, which gives you a chance to do extra damage or healing to additional nearby targets. In addition, we’ll be retiring a few stats that players don’t find very enjoyable to manage, such as Hit and Expertise. We’re also making improvements to armor itemization that will make it easier to share armor pieces across classes. We’ll have more details to share as development continues.

Q: Will there be any updates to the graphics and changes to the minimum system requirements?
Yes—we’re planning a number of tweaks and improvements to the graphics engine in this expansion, including some updates related to the upgraded player characters and the introduction of the Garrison. We’re also looking into updating other existing systems with an eye toward improving graphical quality and performance. We’ll announce the exact system requirements closer to the expansion’s release.
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[H1Z1] Sony's New Zombie Totally-Not-DayZ/Rust MMO

April 17, 2014, 10:56 pm
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Official Website: https://www.h1z1.com/home
H1Z1 Twitch channel: http://www.twitch.tv/h1z1

What is H1Z1? Let John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment (Planetside 2, Everquest) tell you himself:
Spoiler:
Hi there,
I wanted to tell you about an exciting new free-to-play game we’ve had under wraps here at SOE for some time. It’s called H1Z1. It’s a massively multiplayer game in which players fight for survival in a world where death is the only sure thing. The H1Z1 virus devastated mankind and left nothing but death and destruction in its wake and a world nearly empty of human life where the remnants of humanity are in a fight against extinction against those infected with the virus. It’s been 15 years since H1Z1 was first encountered and what’s left of the world before is overrun with the Infected. Humanity has been reduced to hiding in the shadows, searching desperately for food and water and anything that can help to survive even for another day. But the Infected aren’t the only dangers in the world. Everyday life in the Apocalypse means dealing with all kinds of wild animals and the brutality of other survivors, as well as finding your next meal and a safe place to sleep. It also means scavenging or crafting anything that can help you live just one more day. In H1Z1 every minute of every day is borrowed time and fearing for your life… unless you are the Danger (talking to you Walter), but life can and will go on… even in circumstances as dire as this. Humanity has not given in to the Infected. There are still pockets of humanity and the fight goes on!

Our vision for this game is very simple but ambitious. We are starting with what I would call “Middle America” – an “anywhere and everywhere” town. The world is massive as you’ve come to expect from our games. Over time we will grow the world until we have our own version of the U.S. after the death and destruction brought on during the H1Z1 epidemic. It will be our own version of America. We’ll have urban cities and desolate wide open places. All connected seamlessly. Our focus is building a sandbox style of gameplay where players can build shelters out of resources in the world. They can even work together to make amazing fortresses complete with weaponry to help defend against both the Infected and other players. Players also have access to a very deep crafting system that can let players make a huge variety of awesome stuff, including weapons (I made a 1911 the other day) and things like Molotov cocktails, explosives.. and other fun surprises.

I will also go right to the heart of the question a lot of players will have – “There are a lot of survival / Zombie games… how is this one going to be any different?”. First off, it’s a persistent MMO that can hold thousands of players on servers we host (yes there will be multiple servers with very different rule sets). Why is that a good thing? It means a thriving economy (oh yes… there’s trading). It also means you have potential allies in the all-out war on the Infected... and many an enemy as well. It uses our proprietary next-gen Forgelight engine and that means we’ve had a lot of really cool technology to work with to make the game we wanted to make. It’s also designed from the ground up for our players to become part of the design process. The Roadmap system that we built for PlanetSide 2 will be used extensively to clearly communicate what features we’re working on and what you can expect and when. You’re also going to be getting awesome access to our developers. We’ll be opening it up for Player Studio creations too so expect player-created items to make their way into the game. The main thing that differentiates H1Z1 from the other great games in the genre is the emphasis we are putting on player ownership and building. We want you to be able to form roving gangs that are headquartered out of an abandoned warehouse that you’ve taken over... or a house you’ve built from scratch after having cut trees down and secured the resources to make it. We are giving players the tools to make their own towns, camps and defenses, and they can decide how to set up their base (which is in the world btw... not instanced). We’re building in all the social features you’ve come to expect from an SOE game (grouping, proximity voice chat, voice chat for your gang, and many other cool social features).
To use a simple reference I’m sure everyone interested in this game will get... we want our players to make Woodbury from The Walking Dead if they want to. Or take over a prison. Or fix an old car so you and your friends (yeah we have multiplayer vehicles) can run zombies and players over mercilessly, and revel in the sheer delight of hearing a zombie scream as you light it on fire, or craft a gun to take down your friends and enemies alike. Our goal here is to provide emergent gameplay that will allow our players to make the world their own the way they want to. One of the best things about H1Z1 being an MMO is the fact that with a lot of people playing, we’re able to see all different kinds of gameplay. If you prefer a quiet life as a farmer raising crops... we’re going to make sure your zombie apocalypse fantasy is complete. If you’re like me and you want nothing more than to kill everything that moves, by all means see how that goes. It’s going to be a blast!

Check out H1Z1.com and the subreddit ( http://reddit.com/r/h1z1 ). We’ll be adding more information in the coming weeks to the website. We’ll also be very openly answering questions in the subreddit.

Next week you can see us do a livestream of the game as we have a playtest. Stay tuned!

Smed

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Ultima Online

January 16, 2015, 10:26 am
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The First Annual Grindies: Winners in OP!

December 22, 2014, 8:41 am
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And your 2014 Grindies are...

Best Graphics (TIE!)
  • Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: With beautiful landscapes, wonderfully varied gear to play dress up in, and tons of intricately designed monsters, it's no wonder FFXIV was one of our two winners.
  • Elder Scrolls Online
  • Wildstar
  • Lord of the Rings Online
  • Guild Wars 2: Despite releasing nearly three years ago, GW2 continues to impress by showing the staying power of its unique, painterly style.
  • Planetside 2

Best Story
  • Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: A long-running plot throughout the leveling experience that continues with each content patch has captivated players and brought a real Final Fantasy feel to the MMO genre.
  • Lord of the Rings Online
  • The Secret World (RUNNER-UP!)
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic
  • Guild Wars 2
  • Wildstar
  • World of Warcraft

Best Music
  • Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: Final Fantasy has a clear advantage with a long legacy of beloved music, and XIV does not fail to live up to that aural tradition by offering a mix of old new tunes and classic remixes.
  • World of Warcraft
  • Wildstar
  • Lord of the Rings Online (RUNNER-UP)

Best Combat
  • Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
  • The Secret World
  • Guild Wars 2
  • TERA: More engaging real-time combat is becoming a thing over the traditional target/hotkey style, and TERA is among the first MMOs to really do it justice.
  • Planetside 2
  • Destiny
  • Dark Age of Camelot
  • Wildstar

Best Crafting
  • Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: With professions being classes unto themselves, and the act of crafting being akin to a form of puzzle combat, XIV offers an incredibly deep experience that few MMOs can rival.
  • Wildstar
  • Archeage (RUNNER UP!)

Achievement in Real Estate Award
  • Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
  • Wildstar: In spite all of its failings, nobody will find much fault with Carbine's take on housing. Easy access to housing, a ton of freedom in item placement, and a ton of doo-dads to place made housing almost a game of its own.
  • Lord of the Rings Online
  • World of Warcraft (RUNNER UP!)

The Vlad Award for Dungeon Design
  • Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: From haunted mansions to small encounters with primals, XIV offered a lot of variety and tightly designed places for dungeon crawlers to get their fix.
  • Lord of the Rings Online
  • Wildstar

The Mountain Dew Award in PvP (TIE!)
  • Guild Wars 2: Many consider GW2's predecessor to be among the best PvP MMOs out there, so it's little shock that GW2 continues that tradition of player on player smashing.
  • Wildstar
  • Archeage: Skewing towards a more traditional style of MMO where the world was harsh and uncaring, Archeage definitely fostered players looking for that old-school dog-eat-dog fantasy world.

Best Content Patch
  • Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: Maintaining a steady schedule of a patch every 3-4 months, XIV offers a ridiculous amount of content on a regular basis, with new dungeons, quests, and other distractions.
  • The Secret World
  • Guild Wars 2 (RUNNER UP!)

Best Expansion
  • World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor: One of the strongest expansions in WoW's history, with the introduction of housing, a more open and story-based leveling experience, and tons of quality of life improvements. It's no surprise that nobody could even think of another expansion to even rival Blizzard's strong entry.

Best Newcomer
  • Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: While XIV came out in 2010, ARR is still quite young, and is purpose one of the few stories of an MMO successfully rebounding from a complete failure of a launch. For many players, ARR was more or less a wholly new MMO to explore.
  • Archeage (RUNNER UO)
  • Wildstar

The APB Award in Abject Failure
  • Wildstar: Despite showing promise with enthusiastic devs, amazing housing, and a wonderful aesthetic, Wildstar was plagued with bugs, an endgame hostile to casual players, and a general lack of stuff to do at endgame. Future patches just made things worse, forcing Carbine to renege on their promise of aggressive, frequent patching. It's no terribly shocking that Wildstar was the lone nominee for biggest dud.

Most Improved
  • Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: Even ignoring the obvious 2013 revamp, XIV continues to improve thanks to a steady release schedule of content patches. The XIV today is a significantly different, and better, game than the XIV of a year ago, and not all MMOs can say that.
  • World of Warcraft

The Karl Marx F2P Award (TIE!
  • Lord of the Rings Online
  • Archeage: Launching as a free game is becoming more common, and not just cheap games to bilk kids of money. Archeage launched as a strong free title thanks to letting players have fun without requiring a huge initial investment.
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic: It's hard to deny the quality of TOR's economy, considering that the move to F2P has successfully prevented the game from becoming a huge flop.

The Robert Kotick "F2P" Award
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic: ...on the other hand, many of you though TOR was a huge rip-off. The game was definitely panned when it first went to F2P for how poorly it treated free players by imposing a large number of restrictions on gameplay mechanics.
  • Neverwinter

MMO of the Year 2014
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Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
Is there any surprise? While other games might have higher highs, XIV delivered on thing in 2014, and that was never letting up on the content pipeline. Not content just releasing regular MMO content like dungeons and raids, XIV released a whole new class last year in a regular content patch. All this while providing an excellent take on the WoW-style MMOs people expect these days. Final Fantasy 14 doesn't try to reinvent the wheel, but instead combine beautiful imagery, music, and story to create a world people want to inhabit. And then they keep building up that world so people never want it. And Square-Enix isn't letting up: the game has an expansion in just a few months, and there's even a content patch being released as I type this. The year 2014 was a very good for FFXIV, and 2015 looks to be even stronger.
  • Lord of the Rings Online
  • Guild Wars 2 (RUNNER UP!)
  • Archeage
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[Crowfall] A (probably) PvP-focused, player driven game with some big names behind it.

January 23, 2015, 8:08 pm
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Crowfall is a very newly announced project, headed by: J. Todd Coleman, the Creative Director of Shadowbane, Wizard101 and Pirate101and Gordon Walton, the Executive Producer of Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and Star Wars: the Old Republic.

Not much information exists yet, but here's a few snippets courtesy of their forums, links to the newsposts just below the images.

Character Creation:
Server Architecture and Economy/Crafting hints:
Also, here is a fairly useless (as of now) DevTracker, if you care.

So yeah! Who knows. I'm cautiously optimistic.
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[Phantasy Star Online 2] Emergency Code: Duel! All are welcome!

January 16, 2014, 10:05 am
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Welcome space-robot/loli/androgynus teenager to the wonderful world of Phantasy Star Online 2. Well technically, 'universe' is more apt or really inter-dimensional, timey-wimey existence.

So let us address the elephant in the room first. No there still is no NA release yet, it is still "in the works". Yes, you can in fact play on Japanese servers with no issue. And yes, I will tell you how to do that (point of fact, it is pretty easy). So if you are already a seasoned Phantasy Star player and just want to jump right in than head to the bottom of the OP. For the rest of you who want to know more, pull up a seat (figuratively of course, as I assume you are already literally sitting down).


What is PSO2? And P.S. you misspelled 'fantasy'.

Okay, first off don't be an ass, it is a proper noun.

Secondly. Phantasy Star Online 2 is (surprise, surprise) the sequel to Phantasy Star Online which made it's first debut in the way, way long ago on a little known and misunderstood console called the Dreamcast.

PSO2 is a hack n' slashy/shooty (none of this hotbar combat bid'niss here) MMO-lite game in which you take on the role of a newly minted Ark (an intrepid space hero) who explores dangerous alien locales for loot/glory/sometimes genocide.

I call the game "MMO-Lite" as it has a solid blend of singleplayer/multiplayer elements.

The game has a story, complete with cut-scenes, story events, boss fights, and other JRPG staples. However, it is also online much like the original Guild Wars. You take on missions either solo or with 3 other buddies you can conquer the world.

The player hub area is an Ark Ship (each server is 1 Ark Ship and all the ships make up the Ark Fleet, which I thought was a nice touch). Ark Ships are massive flying nations that were sent out in to the unknown to find new life and brutally murder the shit out of it (at least that is my impression). Though if you want the official story, then fine, here you go.
Embark on an endless journey through the galaxy...!

Home to three (Axen's note: actually four now) species - Humans, the Newman, and the CAST - the fleet known as "Oracle" continues its journey across the vast expanse of interstellar space between inhabitable worlds. When it first became possible for this fleet to travel beyond the reaches of our galaxy, a new history was born.

In the year 283 of the New Light, "Oracle" traversed numerous galaxies and discovered countless worlds.

In the far reaches of outer space, grounds known as "Arks" were set up to explore and research newly discovered planets. Their purpose was to move from one planet to another, helping to build and advance the infrastructures of civilization.

Seeking new adventure and new opportunity, different Arks work together in order to explore the depths of space and discover what my be waiting.

Now, as new Arks set off to explore unknown regions of space, a new journey begins...


Okay I get the premise, but how does it play?

Well, that is easy, it is straight up action. The five D's of Dodgeball are in full effect here; dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge.

You can lock on to a target to help (and it does) facilitate combat, but just because you are locked on does not mean you will automatically hit (at least with range weapons). Enemies can (and will) dodge your attacks. Luckily you can do the same to them. You also have to keep in mind terrain as well. If you shoot a fireball at a space-gorilla and he is behind a tree you will blow up that tree (literally, it is awesome) instead of hitting the space-gorilla.

As I mentioned before, this isn't standard MMO hotbar combat. It is absolutely action oriented.

You can have three weapons active at any one time (at least). Though you are free to switch out what those weapons are whenever you want.

You can learn a ton of different attacks and level up those attacks, but you have to pick and choose the ones you want to actually use in combat (they're pretty much all awesome and you can change what abilities you are using whenever you want).

So as an example, my guy is a Force (basically magic type). I have a staff, gunblade, and a thingy (techno-magic book dealie). My current skill loadout is standard attack (mouse 1), a fireball (mouse 2), a freezing ice attack (shift-mouse 1), and a defensive spell (shift-mouse 2).

Enemies (normally) telegraph their attacks. Sometimes you only have a split second, other times you could go make a sandwich and still have time to react.

All in all I really enjoy the combat.
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Two other neat things to mention.

One, you can befriend NPCs and eventually gain their contact info so you can invite them to join you on quests if you're the loner type.

Two, you ever play Dragon's Dogma? You know the Pawn system? Basically in PSO2 you can turn your dude in to a recruitable NPC that other players hire to bring along on missions. Not sure what, if any, bonus you gain from it.


So what are my race/class options?

For this I'll just straight up copy the info from here (I'll talk more about that link in a moment as it is important).

RACES:

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Humans are balanced towards physical strength and photon (Axen's note: read 'magic'), they can adapt to every class.


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Newmans are skilled in handling the photon. To compensate for their physical weakness, their photon sensitivity is high, unrivaled by the other races.


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Casts are the machine race, but since their bodies are artificial, their handling of the photon is weak, to compensate for this, they have an exquisitely firm body.


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Dumans (Axen's note: sometimes 'Dewman') have strong offensive skills but low defensive attributes, and thus need to rely on evasion in combat.


The actual stat differences between races isn't all that big and you can get away with playing whatever class with whatever race without issue.

CLASSES:

Hunter

One of the three primary classes which excels in close-ranged combat.
Their stat growth focuses on S-ATK, S-DEF and HP for increased survivability even when fighting enemies alone.
Weapons can also be temporarily enhanced through the use of gears, which depending on the weapon could affect charging speed, range, or power.
Skill enhancements for Guard and Step are highly recommended since they allow you to quickly dodge or block incoming attacks without taking any damage.

Ranger

One of the three primary classes which excels in mid-ranged combat.
Their stat growth focuses on R-ATK and R-DEF which is mainly used for ranged combat.
Rangers specialize in attacking weak points with skills that allow you to weaken certain spots on enemies or further increase damage to those vulnerabilities.
In addition, Rangers also inflict bonus damage when performing head shots since the head automatically becomes a weak point for them.

Force

One of the three primary classes which excels in long-ranged combat through the use of technics.
Their stat growth focuses on T-ATK and T-DEF which is mainly used for technics, but pretty low on HP.
Force can specialize in either fire, ice or lightning attribute, each having their own pros and cons.
Since they can use technics to heal themselves, they can survive without the use of healing items.

Braver

Added as a 4th primary class since Episode 2, they excel in both short-ranged and long-ranged combat.
Their stat growth focuses on S-ATK, R-ATK and DEX, which gives them great advantage when attacking at the cost of having lower defenses.
The katana can also be temporarily enhanced through the use of gears, which further increases the damage output of the weapon during counter attacks.
Weak Stance works great on bosses and other large enemies due to their exploitable weak points being lockable and easy to target.

Fighter

Secondary class that branched off from Hunter, which also excel in close-ranged combat.
Similar to Hunter, their stat growth focuses on S-ATK, S-DEF and HP for increased survivability even when fighting enemies alone.
Their weapons can also be temporarily enhanced through the use of gears, which depending on the weapon could evade incoming attacks or damage nearby foes.
Skill enhancements for Brave and Wise Stances are highly recommended since they allow you great advantages depending on your position.

Gunner

Secondary class that branched off from Ranger, which excels in mid-ranged to close-ranged combat.
Their stat growth focuses on R-ATK and R-DEF which is mainly used for ranged combat.
Although Gunners can also equip rifles, they can't use it properly as a Ranger does since they don't have all the weak point enhancements.
Instead, they focus more on chain combos with the twin machineguns which makes the finishing move a lot deadly.

Techter

Secondary class that branched off from Force, which excels in close-ranged to long-ranged combat.
Unlike Force, their stat growth focuses on S-ATK and S-DEF which is mainly used for close-ranged combat.
Techters can specialize in either wind, light or dark attribute, each having their own pros and cons.
They also have a few support skills that can be useful for the whole party, which enables them to fight at the front line or at the back.


Also, you can freely change between the classes and each class keeps track of its own level.

Each class can use several different weapons (and let me tell you, there are a lot to pick from). From bows, swords, great swords, twin blades, gunblades, dual pistols, machine guns, sniper rifles, magic thingies, space-whips, staves, and wands (to name a few).

Out in the wild and from merchants you can get "discs" that teach you new abilities for a particular weapon. I haven't delved to deep in to it with PSO2 yet as all I find are sword/gun techniques and I use staves. :(


Alright, so how does it all go down?

Well once you have created a character and completed the tutorial/prologue you'll be dumped off in to your CampShip. This is your own little drop ship complete with storage, market, recruitment station, teleport pad to the Ark Ship, and quest board.

There are a lot of different things to do, but I'll run you through an average job.

From the quest board (or NPC) you will get a job. In the beginning these are basic "Find and kill X", but as you progress they become somewhat more complicated. It honestly reminds me a bit of Monster Hunter.

So say you take the job to exterminate space-wolves. You'll head to the planet and then your mission starts.

The are you are in is basically a zone and somewhere in it is your target. Of course there are other mobs that will get in your way.

But that ain't all. There are random events and random cut-scenes you may or may not run in to.

You can repeat a mission and have different things happen each time.

As you move through the zone you can explore a bit and find treasure, special mobs, events, what-have-you.

When you find your target the game will let you know and a very nice lady will give you the details. You fight and kill your target and the mission is complete. You can then teleport back to your CampShip and get your mission debrief.

Then you do it again. :D

As I mentioned though, there are a lot of other things to do.

Apart from the standard mission board quests you also have story missions, client mission (where an NPC requests a specific thing which may or may not be tied to certain monsters), the Matter Board (which I can only describe as one half achievements with rewards and another half extra missions), and the occasional fleet assault wherein the Ark Fleet is attacked by a monstrous entity and it is all hands on deck to fight it off. Which, btw, is awesome, as the combined efforts of all the players online count towards defeating it and it looks a little something like this:
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Well that all sounds neat, so bottom line, how much does this cost?

Absolutely nothing. The game is free to play. It does have a cash shop, but from what I can tell it's basically just fluff. Potions to increase XP, crafting results, costumes, and the like. From what I've been told there really isn't anything in there you need in order to fully enjoy the game.


Okay I'm interested, but wouldn't this game be all Moonspeak?

The PSO fanbase is, if nothing else, dedicated. As such the fans have created several translation patches for the story itself (which is surprisingly well done), items, monster names, quests, and so forth. Some things are still in Moonspeak, but for the most part these are just fulff like item descriptions and quest story text.


Well, how do I go about getting this then?

Okay, first off follow the instructions in this guide in order to register and download the game.

One of the instructions calls for you to 'link' your SegaID with the game, but I never did that and it worked fine. All in all the process is no different then registering for any other game, and Hell if you have Google Chrome auto-translate for you then it is even easier. The hardest part is the Hiragana Captcha you have to decipher. It can be done and that guide has links to help.

Now after you have downloaded the game and created a SegaID you will want to download the PSO2 Tweaker. This is a fan-made launcher that will (among other things) download the latest translation patches and keep those patches up-to-date. It makes the entire process painless.

tl/dr

Step 1: Follow the instructions in this guide (don't worry about "linking" your SegaID to the game).
Step 2: Go here and download the PSO2 Tweaker/English Launcher.
Step 3: While still at Arks-Layer.com it is recommended you download the Story Patch as well (it is 2.5 gigs). The PSO2 Tweaker will install it for you after you have downloaded it and it will continue to keep it up-to-date.
Step 4: Launch the game (the normal way the first time, then through the PSO2 Tweaker afterwards just to be safe) and log in.

PROTIP: If you used a capital letter in your SegaID username it doesn't matter. The login screen does not seem to recognize capital letters. So save yourself hours of grief and remember to type your user name in lower case when you log in to the game. Seriously, as an example say when I create my SegaID I typed Axen is my user name. When I go to log in to PSO2 and type 'Axen' it will not recognize it. So I'd have to type 'axen' instead. It could be that I am crazy and simply screwed up, but just a friendly piece of advice in case you run in to trouble.


Fantastic Links!

This blog has numerous guides and links to helpful things. Some of it is up-to-date and some is not. Still, super handy to have bookmarked.
PSO2.Cirnopedia is the preeminent wiki for PSO2 info and data. Pretty much anything you need to know is here and it is constantly updating.
PSO2 Symbol Art Editor. You can have your own personal "graffiti" tag (for lack of a better word). You can have one for your store, your character, your team, or whatever. This editor allows you to import/export Symbol Art from outside the game making it super-fucking-easy to have bang'n art.


Check these videos out to see it all in motion.
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Showing off a 1v1 boss fight. Check out them moves!

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This is a multi-party boss fight, not unlike a raid.

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This one is a great video for so many reasons. Chiefly showing off how smooth it is and the English patch.

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Heh, or this one where the party went on a normal mission only to have a random event happen in which the party got abducted and had to fight evil versions of their own characters.

What server, bro?

Most Westerners play on Ship 2 'Ur'.

My character is named Axen Moon.

There is truly a lot going on in this game and I've barely scratched the surface. All add more info and such to the OP as I learn more, for now it is barebones.

edit-

I mentioned last night that there was a lot of Fate/Night stuff in this game. :P
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[APB: Reloaded] New name, same game?

January 26, 2011, 6:31 pm
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Just got an interesting e-mail in my inbox tonight, and I bet many of you have too. I don't know what is allowed to be discussed and what is not, but it looks like some company called GamersFirst will be bringing APB back from its recently dug grave.

Looking at the Gamersfirst main page it appears to be one of the many companies that pumps out a bunch of free to play mmorpgs, so that's a big strike against this even becoming anything better than what it was.

Looks like they have been publishing info for about 10 weeks about how they are reviving the project, but honestly I've not heard a single gaming outlet even discuss this. (Probably because of the bad taste left in everyones mouth.)


So heres the dev blog : http://apbreloaded.blogspot.com/

The twitter: http://twitter.com/apb_reloaded

And it doesn't appear they really have a main page yet. Though there is a special link if you get the e-mail.

Closed beta seems to be starting in the near future from what I can gather, and maybe they can turn this game into something better, who knows.
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[WoW] I'm hosting 'you missed the boat' normal raids! (Alliance)

February 23, 2015, 7:17 am
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Warlords of Draenor has been out for three and a half months now, but even that is long enough for me and quite a few others that I know of to have fallen behind the content curve. With that in mind, I’m going to be hosting Alliance Highmaul normal runs on Saturday evenings, starting at 9pm EST.
My goals are simple:

1) I want to have a group of people that are willing to login, socialize, kill some bosses, get some loot, and log off. Easy peasy. We wipe 7 times on something? No worries. We have to call it early? Stick in mumble and swap ‘i queue’ horror stories. I want to play a game we all enjoy with people that don’t suck and I think we can make that happen.

A) I want our group to progress into the Forge (normal) fairly soon. If we get together a group and everyone is geared enough for it, great! If not, Highmaul it is! I am married with a baby on the way. I don’t have time to be on the bleeding edge of content anymore. I believe that we should be able to remain on the bruised edge of it, though. As new content comes out, I hope to move on in a timely manner, but wouldn't be heartbroken to have to wait a week or two to help our regulars gear into it.

i) If you’re coming, please try and continue to come. We’re not going to have any sort of attendance goosery. The runs will only have reserved slots for my guildies (which shouldn’t be more than a group of 7 total.) In the highly unlikely case that we have people competing for slots, it’ll be first come first serve.

a) Low dps? Trouble on your heals charts? Difficult time with a skill check? No problem. This is the ‘everyone gets a trophy’ raid. My guild is already a skilled and geared group. We will be progressing, but this is meant to be a fun run, not the Boston Marathon. If we do get good enough, I’m not averse to moving into heroics, but at least for the first few weeks I hope to do some normals and see how we fare.

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, please post the character you’d like to bring (with intended spec and approximate ilvl) and be really specific about whether you can make it on this Saturday (February 28th) or not. Then send a friend request to Buttes#1527! See you in Draenor!

TL;DR Alliance Saturday Feb 28th @ 9PM EST we're raiding Highmaul!
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My time spent in The Repopulation so far.

February 27, 2015, 10:02 am
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Hey! I searched and didn't see any threads about this game so here I go.

First of all I'd like to say that the crafting system is more complex than any other MMO you'll ever see. From what I can gather it's more complex than SWG in it's prime or more in depth than any online game before. I'm saying this with a 10 year career of MMO's myself.

To give an example, real (I think) chemistry is used to make chemical components.

There is a searchable in game data base with every item, property, monster, you name it at the press of a button,

I bought a 2 seater hover car and plan to use it to ferry new players far south to learn animal training because they have no mount yet.

I tamed a baby dinosaur thing and had it fight for me while I used a medical scanner to keep it healed since I wanted to practice first aid. It then grew up in stages and became more powerful. If you don't take care of it or it falls too many times in battle it will die.

I then researched Genetic Engineering and made stacks of disposable monsters that can be sold, summoned and hybridzed.

A friend sent me a robot pet which was a ranged attack model which I could then modify to my liking and repair.

Missions taken from a generated job listing confirm and mold to your developed skill set.

You can become a thief and assassin and do underworld missions. Get caught at the wrong time and you can be exiled from your starting nation.

Speaking of nations, you can form your own, build a city of any purpose and attract NPCs that will act just like starting capital ones.

There is a planned bounty hunting system.

There is planned space travel. And underwater vehicles.

The starting planet is immense and will take noticeable time with even a fast mount to travel across.

This is how complex the crafting is http://aena.at/craftmap/craftmap.html

Player housing is both area isolated in the open world and instanced in major cities.

You can play written music and recorded songs from a (for the moment) small variety of instruments. ( not 100% sure on this its not in yet. but it is similar to other MMO's that have it.)

You can create siege engines and go to war against any nation.

Your armor is shit without custom made fittings that let you customize it however you want.

If resources are gathered too much in an area they will become sparse there.

Okay! That's about it for my first impression of around 6 days of playtime.
It's currently in late alpha, there are bugs that are being fixed in every new patch and it's $20 on steam.

You can get it here.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/322300/?snr=1_5_1100__1100

Oh! And the player base is less than 200 people across 3 servers at this time which is very sad indeed! But I've made lots of great friends already and met many nice and interesting people. I hope you check it out if all of the above sound like fun!

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[SRO] Shadowrun Online - Funded and in development.

July 31, 2012, 3:48 pm
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The world has changed…

Magic is no longer just for fairy tales. It’s real. While technology has merged with flesh to challenge the strength of old world sorcery. Now people are more than just people; after an unexplained genetic event, some of them have developed traits that have left them labeled as elves, dwarfs, orks, and trolls. And dragons aren’t just in picture books–they’re very real, and they’re running nations and some of the biggest corporations in the world.

People call it the Sixth World, and it’s not a friendly place. Mega corporations have ruthlessly consolidated power, and they make everyone, from the lowliest wage slave to the most powerful government leader, dance to their tune. Many people sell their lives to these megacorps, believing they have no choice. But there are a few who have the skills, the guts and the nerve to stay independent, finding a way to live in the gray areas of a world not built for them. They can survive–and if they’re real lucky–thrive in the corners and shadows of the world. They’re outlaws, but they’re tolerated by the powers of the world because they’re useful. They are called shadowrunners.

I'm certain that many people here have heard of the super successful Kickstarter for Returns, which will be a dream come true for everyone that has had a deal in the darkness with a Mr. Johnson, (wang jokes permitted) but there seems to be comparatively few people who have heard of . Well, let's start this off with the official Kickstarter video for the project.

Or at least I would, if I knew how to link a video from another website directly into a forum. For now, I'll just say that there are some informational and gameplay videos on their Kickstarter page, which can be found using a simple search.

Either way, I'm covering the point by point of the projects and developing game right here.

What is Shadowrun?
Spoiler:
Shadowrun is a pen and paper RPG created in the last century that combines a Cyberpunk Dystopian Future with High Fantasy. In this setting, the Aztec calender doesn't represent the death of the world, but the ending of one age and the beginning of the next as the calender resets itself. Turns out, in 5,000 year cycles, magic enters and exits our world, which means that in 2012 there were fierce disasters coupled with the militaristic uprising of cultures that were still in tune with mysticism, leading to the reclaiming of the Southwest United States by the Sioux Nation. The event also led to the awakening of the most long lived, cunning, farsighted, and devious creatures to even live, Dragons. And these dragons wasted no time in taking over nations and founding mega-corporations to exert their pull over humanity, and continue their eternal power struggles with one another.

And with the return of Magic came the return of what are now called Meta-Humans. The long dormant genes of Elves and Dwarves suddenly re-emerge and both species are born en mass after the event, while millions of teenagers went through Goblinization as their physical bodies turned turned into Orcs and Trolls wherever they happened to be standing at the time.

Magic came back with a vengeance, but technology refused to die, and the two have now merged like a pair of lovers refusing to be parted. Cybermancy is common and still being explored for high profit as scientists try to get a handle on that pure, raw, and unpredictable power called magic. But there are those who can control it, for a time. Magicians are easily found if you know where to look, and every one is a potential bomb that could be overloaded by the very power that makes them devastating in a fight, leading to their being universally feared and distrusted by friends and foes alike.

Magicians are not the only ones with access to mystic might, as Shamans suddenly found that the spirits of nature can now speak back and lend their power to those who are either worthy or pay the proper price. And the Shamans quickly find that they can delve into the ephemeral world of these same spirits to explore an alien landscape that no human eye had beheld for over five thousand years. But technology has also created a new realm in the form of the internet's foundations. As technology found means to create stable cybernetics that interface with human nerves, it quickly became possible for intelligent beings to submerge their psyches into what has come to be known as the Matrix, the amalgamated cyber landscape of all the interfaced machines on the planet. Through this mentally tactile realm, one with enough skill can enter any space where machine exists and take any secrets for themselves at the risk of their lives, for software countermeasures as brutal as the monsters of legend have been developed for the sole purpose of keep these secrets hidden.

With the use of the resurgent magic, the entire planet became embroiled in wars exploring new territory and new weapons. As a result, the US loses control over most of the continent, and the southern states break away to reform a Confederacy that prioritizes State Rights over Federal Right. Seattle falls and rises again as a hub of commerce, owned and governed by the Mega Corporations that had used the anarchy to consolidate power and annihilate competition until they held most of the political power and wealth the planet has to offer. Split into high tech splendor and high tech ruination, Seattle is the go to town for covert corporate sabotage and every Mega-Corps has a presence there exactly for that reason.

Europe sank into a continent wide mass of violence that resulted in entire tracts of land being rendered nearly uninhabitable, except for the fact that people still live there. The superpower capitol of London has been struck with toxic rain and unbreathable poison air, forcing the residents to go underground into a submerged facsimile of their home city in order to survive. And poor Berlin has once again been carved up into territories by the survivors of the great war. No less than six superpowers hold tracts of land and high security keeping them apart, and that is why Berlin is the holy land of any shadowrunner worth their salt.

What is a shadowrunner? That's you, the player. A person who refuses to play by the new rules, who values their own freedom over the uneasy comforts assigned to you by corporate overlords. A person who is skilled enough at their unethical trade to be tolerated by the powers that be and used for the furthering of their own covert agendas. You live in a world with few rules, and fewer restrictions. But just remember four things.

Watch your back.
Shoot straight.
Conserve your ammo.
Never, ever, cut a deal with a dragon.

Game State: Alpha Build / On Kickstarter

What is Shadowrun Online?
Being named an MORPG, (cutting out the "Massively") Shadowrun Online is a game where the original universe is made digital and shared with only the people you want to share it with. This means you have an Online game that is finally as social or anti-social as wish it to be. With group finders, friend lists, and the ability to form complete teams out of your own roster of Created Characters, the game is uniquely flexible. The game also takes place in the year 2070, twenty years after the current edition of Shadowrun (and the upcoming Shadowrun Returns), and the events that will unfold in SRO will be incorporated into the official PnP Shadowrun Lore as time marches on for the residents of the 6th world. Aside from the base societal structures and ongoing antagonism towards the new meta-human strains that have recently begun appearing, all the events in question will be guided by the player community, including the permanent downfall of one of the Mega-Corps.

The game itself will be a downloaded client to be installed on the hard drive and played in it's own dedicated window, like all other PC games. However, by following a set of instructions it will be possible to play the game in a web browser window instead while retaining the complete 3D aspect and quality, but being able to check your email at the same time.

The game will be playable cross-platform on online PC, Mac, Linux, iOS/iPad, Android Tablet and Ouya.

What does Shadowrun Online look / play like?
Well, here is an early Alpha gameplay video.

Link

As you can see from the video, the game will be presented in a 3D isometric top down view much like X-COM, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Disgaea. The engine is apparently using a lot of relic work from Jaggad Alliance Online while Cliffhanger finishes getting the core gameplay rules perfected for the game's turn-based, initiative ordered, Free/Move/Normal/Complex action automating system perfected before taking away all the current graphics and remaking the graphics engine to be as up to date and good looking as possible.

As for the User Interface that was shown, that is the Super Alpha version shown in the video. User Interfaces are generally the last thing made inside a video game during development.


What is the flow of the game?
The first thing you will do in the game, is find a Mission to go on, aka a Run. As stated before, the UI has not been made (though areas of the world will be sorted by increasing difficulty of Runs), so there is currently no information on this step, or the next one, Gathering a Team. What we do know is that the game will have a built in optional matchmaking system for people who don't mind a random partner in crime. SRO will also have friends lists so you can game with your real life or online buddies, but the most innovative system here is the ability to use your own Created Characters to fill in the spaces that would have been played by humans and turn the Multiplayer, into Single Player. Very handy for lone wolves or people who need an additional member of a team right quick and don't feel like risking a PUG Healer.

After gathering your team, next comes the Legwork. This is where the Social and Background skills / perks found in Shadowrun will really shine.

Link

In the above video, the character obviously failed in his Intimidate check, but the option to use Barter and Diplomacy was also present (and a failure on them would most likely have been less visceral), though the Troll shown is apparently more in favor of speaking through his fists. Legwork seems to be the biggest part of the game that would involve the use of non-combat skills, as SRO has confirmed that a team will be able to either accompany each other for all the legwork performed for a Run, or be able to break apart in whatever grouping it chooses for each member to gather info / obtain an edge in whatever manner suits them best. SRO has also confirmed that background perks, like Contacts, will be alive and well in the game and have an influence. Background Perks can be bought in character creation or earned as a reward during missions, allowing you to slowly create a criminal network that will creep across the face of the Sixth World.

Whether your Legwork is planting demolitions to make an escape route, bribing guards or scientists to open a path inside, hacking the mainframes to get a map of the security layout, or buying info on the contents of the building you're breaking into from an information broker, your team is working to give your Run advantages when you start. Of course, with any system in Shadowrun, there is the possibility of failure. You may come across a random encounter group of street thugs, have your infiltration program countered, or just plain let the wrong people know what your plans are, and the process will end up backfiring on you, creating complications for your Run.

Next comes the Run itself, where the team gathers once again and tries to achieve it's goals as it was hired to perform them, along with any optional or uncovered goals the team has discovered through Legwork. While each run is unique, this is not a Diablo style game. The maps will not randomize the rooms involved, as it really would not make sense if you break into an Aztech science building to kidnap a scientist and then come back to the same building a week later to plant an AI scrambler program in the mainframe and find the interior of the building and the sewer tunnels outside it have been completely rearranged. What is different every time is the security layout, position of guards with patrol routes, intrusive wildlife, guardian beasts, and interrupting rivals. Just like a map of Team Fortress 2, even if the map is the same, the fight will be completely different based on who your opponent is.

After the Run has either been completed more or less successfully, or failed magnificently, the team needs to escape and get to ground. Safehouses (customizable safehouses are confirm for After Launch expansion) are very important for this step, as shaking off the law (government or corporately funded) is as important to your longevity as body armor. Once the team has evaded pursuit, it is time to end the process and get a mission complete. -Process for ending a mission is unknown, as it is once again, User Interface-

After getting your pay, you can spend it on weapons, armor, gear, DocWagon payment plans, or just the average Ale and Whores.
Spoiler:
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Character Creation:
Each account will have three character slots available to them for the creation of Shadowrunners. The process of creation will follow along the more modern Shadowrun PnP rules, where instead of choosing a class and then having your Stats and abilities built around it's intended play style, you are given a blank sheet and an amount of points to spend on what you want on skills, abilities, backgrounds, and perks. This allows a far more fluid and adaptable creation process as you can be a Mage Troll with a penchant for beating people down with your magically augmented fists, or a whisper thin street samurai sniper that locates his targets by hacking into the enemy's security cameras.

Cliffhanger has now released a video showing the general pre-Alpha model and explanation of character creation in Shadowrun Online. Everyone remembers the host from Firefly, yes?
Link



SRO will offer pre-built characters for player that don't want to go into the in depth method of tailoring a character sheet like an Armani tuxedo. In line with the idea of complete customization, SRO will allow players to upload their own character portraits if you don't see one that you like in the game's portrait database. (Samples) There will be people checking these custom submissions before they are enacted as portraits, so anyone who thinks they can get away with a picture of their own wang for an avatar will quickly find their account banned. But this opens up a potential parallel economy in having Deviant Artists making cash by drawing character portraits for the game. Interesting possibilities that.

Players will have the option to play as any of the common Meta-Human types (Human, Elf, Dwarf, Orc, and Troll), with the rarer sub-strains expected in expansions. And BTW, Technomancer is confirmed for launch.

Also, depending on Perks, Traits, and Equipment, players will be able to see the world in different ways.

Link

Equipment:
All combat equipment can be upgraded and personalized in the game, it's maximum customizibility being decided by it's quality. To quote the Cliffhanger representative, "there is only so much you can do for a flintlock musket."

Q and A:
Will SRO occur in the same reality as Shadowrun Returns?
-Yes. This is a world that has been shaped by the actions of the Shadowrun for SNES, Genesis, and Shadowrun Returns. There is an ongoing plotline that involves all the previous games, as well as the Pen and Paper's original world.

Is my character permanent? Will my character die?
-Your character is permanent and will continue to grow in strength and ability for as long as you choose to retain it. While a character cannot be killed, your character can be very badly beaten up by failing their Runs a few times too many. More information on the fallout of failed missions has yet to be released.

So does what I do in game even matter?
-Yes. Shadorunners are hired out by Mega-Corporations, who's power are reflected by the actions of the player community. The power of a corporation is not static, but reactive and dependent on successful Runs to maintain an edge on their competitors. It has already been declared that the players are going to end up bringing down one of the Mega-Corps, but which one it will be, even the developers don't know. The players have not brought it down yet.

Are environments destructible?
Yes, they are. In the final game build, Demolition experts will most likely be able to "Bypass" security systems and reinforced entryways by making their own doors.

Can you hold territory?
-By engaging in PvP, either on your own or with a guild / gang, you can take and hold territory in the game. The benefits of this are not yet known, but cash and fame are likely.

So SRO's events are being incorporated into the Shadowrun PnP game, right? How can I become famous in the Shadowrun world?
-First, those people who contributed the highest "ROCKSTAR" amount to SRO's Kickstarter will be made a famous supermodel / Movie star /Rock star in the game, plastering their faces on advertisements, news, and entertainment. This status will be reflected in the Pen and Paper version of Shadowrun, and be made official canon. The second method would be to make history inside the game through excellence. Should a core set of players do something like succeed in unifying all of Seattle's gang turf, practically for good, then there is a high likelihood of those players becoming cannonical in the PnP game. Basically, if you achieve a legendary status on the game servers, you have a good shot of officially being recorded in Shadowrun's future-history.

So, where's the Matrix? And the Spirit realms? I wanna dive in there!
-They are not planned to be included in the game, as doing so would create a region of the game that only the "selected" can enter, and everyone else is barred entry. Also, creating game maps that disobey every single law of reality in a constantly shifting way would consume too much of Cliffhanger's budget. They may be introduced in an expansion if the community is interested in it enough.

So, I guess it's a Freemium Pay-2-Win game, huh?
-It is not a Pay-2-Win game. The F2P server is meant to be open to everyone, with items to provide faster leveling, self protection, and the usual sort of "Fast Start" items one can choose to buy, yes. But the game will be able to be played 100% free and not be crushed by bankrolling runners, as you will mostly be fighting NPC enemies. Unless you choose to PvP.

Wait, I heard this game was F2P with a cash shop. What's with this new payment plan I hear about?
-There is more than just one payment model. After receiving feedback from the community and running the numbers, Cliffhanger Productions has decided to make a second Server for those who would rather not deal with the Free-2-Play model. They are calling it the Campaign Server, which is modeled after the Guild Wars model of buying content once, and then owning it's usage forever. You get access to all the items you would normally have to pay cash for in the F2P server for in game digital currency, and only pay a single amount up front for each content package you wish to use. As more content is added, you will be able to pick and choose what you want, and since content expansions are expected to come out every 3-6 months (estimated period, not set in stone), we can safely conclude that the future of SRO will be expansive.

But even so, F2P and Campaign are separate servers, right? That's permanently dividing the community.
-It is not a segregated community. The F2P and Campaign servers will have overlap, each world's actions reflected in the other, and it has been promised that players on the different payment servers will be able to play with one another. This means that if a Campaign player gets one of his friends to try the game as F2P, then you can do some runs together to help him learn the ropes. And should that new player decide to buy the content and become a Campaign player, then his character will be transferred to the new server with all levels, equipment, and property intact.

Why have I not heard of Shadowrun Online until now?!
-The game is still in Alpha development, or even pre-alpha, and has not received coverage from the more normal coverage from magazines and news sites that half finished or nearly released games get.

Music:
Shadowrun Online is currently receiving submissions from composers for the in game music. All located submissions will be reposted here.

Please note, these are actual composers, people who make a living by writing and selling music as their primary source of income.

Walter Machado
Matias Castro
Alexander Guski
Géry Montet
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Skyforge - New MMORPG by Allods Team and Westernization by Obsidian

March 20, 2014, 6:28 am
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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Your destiny is your own to forge. My.com, a subsidiary of Mail.Ru Group, has revealed a new AAA title: the premium massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Skyforge is currently being developed by the Allods Team, an in-house studio of Russian Internet giant Mail.Ru Group, with westernization from US gamemaker Obsidian Entertainment. Skyforge will launch as an immersive MMORPG gaming experience for PCs.

“This is our most ambitious project to date”

In Skyforge, players develop from immortals, to mighty champions, to powerful gods gaining and developing their mortal followers and powers along the way. Empowered by the faith and skill of their followers, gods battle invading armies in intense, merciless combat to protect their home world. Skyforge features unique action combat and a massive variety of classes and character customization options as players grow from immortal to invincible gods.

Skyforge is being developed by the award winning Russian game developer Allods Team, a part of the Mail.ru Group. Their last project, Allods Online, was the first major Russian MMORPG and launched in more than 15 countries. The core of Allods Team includes industry veterans who developed internationally acclaimed games including Evil Islands, Etherlords, Silent Storm and Heroes of Might and Magic V.

Set in a world where fantasy meets Sci-Fi and ancient mysteries live side by side with cutting-edge technologies, Skyforge transports players to a stunning universe where mortals and immortals fight for survival against invading gods and their armies. Players start as immortals newly reborn into the world and vie to become gods themselves.

“This is our most ambitious project to date,” said Oleg Shpilchevsky, The Allods Team’s Head of Development Studio. “With players competing and cooperating on one single giant server, Skyforge brings the massive back to MMORPGs.”

Visceral combat sequences and grand battles unfold across a world settings limited only by the developer's imagination. To ensure that Skyforge meets the expectations of players worldwide, The Allods Team has enlisted the help of the widely lauded development studio, Obsidian Entertainment.

“We have begun working closely with the Allods Team to ensure that the game is a success in western markets,” said Eric DeMilt, Development Director of Culturalization for Skyforge, Obsidian Entertainment. “We are building a team of accomplished developers to collaborate in class and instance content development as well as westernization. It is an exciting partnership with an excellent development team, and we can't wait for players to get into the game.”

To learn more about Skyforge, please visit www.skyforge.com. For instant updates, follow the Skyforge team on Twitter, like us on Facebook and subscribe to the official YouTube channel.

Skyforge joins My.com’s stellar, recently-announced 2014 lineup that also includes AAA MMOs Armored Warfare, being developed by Obsidian Entertainment; World of Speed, in development with Slightly Mad Studios and Evolution, a sci-fi action RPG for iPad and iPhone being developed by My.com's internal studio.

About My.com

My.com is a subsidiary of Mail.Ru Group, the largest Internet company in Russian-speaking countries with an audience of more than 100 million users (comScore, September 2013), that is publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange (LSE: MAIL), (listed since November 5, 2010).

My.com is building an integrated communication and entertainment platform, dubbed ‘Communitainment,’ beginning with a family of mobile services and games. My.com’s mobile communications apps - myMail and myChat - provide multiple email account management and messaging, and myGames is a growing collection of mobile and PC game experiences.

For more information about My.com, please visit: http://press.my.com/about/.

About Obsidian Entertainment

Founded in 2003, Obsidian Entertainment is an entertainment software development company based in Irvine, California, passionately dedicated to the creation of high quality role playing games for all personal computer and console platforms. Obsidian is best known for the products Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords, Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout: New Vegas, South Park: The Stick of Truth, and the record breaking crowdfunding through Kickstarter for Pillars of Eternity (http://eternity.obsidian.net).

For more information about Obsidian Entertainment, please visit: http://www.obsidian.net/.

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http://sf.my.com/
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There are many Fantasies; but this, like the last, was Final [FFXI]

May 20, 2010, 7:02 pm
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FINAL FANTASY XI: ONLINE
ITT we laugh, we cry, and we sit around with our party flag up.

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Final Fantasy XI is Square's entry in the MMO market and if you've got a PS2/3, Xbox 360, or a half-decent PC then you too can play, because it's totally cross-platform with international servers

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The June version update is here, marking the arrival of "Vision of Abyssea", the first in the Abyssea series of battle add-ons set to offer epic new challenges to adventurers who would take up arms under the sunless skies of this forbidding realm.

But that's not all! This update will feature the long-awaited lifting of the level cap, accompanied by a host of new weapon skills and job abilities. Adventurers can also venture into the newly unlocked Walk of Echoes and experience the climactic conclusions of the Wings of the Goddess nation quests. There's bound to be something for everyone!

Players are also encouraged to revisit the Vision of Abyssea site, where the latest information on the formidable set of arms known as "Empyrean Weapons" has been revealed.

Full details on the version update may be found here.

Access the official Vision of Abyssea site here.

Seasonal Event!

No seasonal event currently~!

Not sure if FFXI is for you? Then you should check out the 14-day free trial! It's free (as cleverly indicated in the previous sentence) and doesn't even require a credit card to play.

NA Trial
EU Trial
JP Trial
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What makes this game different?
  • Job system - 20 available jobs, all of which can be played on a single character
  • Difficulty - nothing in this game is easy
  • Grouping - if you're going to get most anything done, you'll need to team up
  • Crafting - nearly everything monsters drop is in some sort of crafting recipe and the job system ensures even low-level gear is always in demand
  • Community - the playerbase is a pretty good bunch and is willing to help you out with most things
  • Atmosphere - the game looks and feels like Final Fantasy through and through
  • Cutscenes - yep, they're here too
Screenshots from Grinnin
Spoiler:
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Screenshots from Bri
Spoiler:
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Screenshots from Ormi
Spoiler:
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Haiku Attachment
I wish I were a real girl.
Sad automaton.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/25753.html
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/24494.html
Can I solo?
The simple answer is "Yes and no," but it is a bit more complicated than that.

As a brand new character, fresh out of the shrink-wrap, you will be soloing until you get a job to level 10 at the minimum; sometimes upwards of level 15. From that point on, it is in your best interests to find parties, or at least one or two other people to group with, for two reasons:

The monsters get a lot tougher. The power curve goes from a gentle wading pool to an olympic swimming pool to a raging river rapids.

All higher end reward content (the stuff that gets you the cool swag) needs parties in sets of three, (usually) six, and sometimes 18. How to behave in a party is a skill set that you need to cultivate: Without it you miss the whole game.

Once you have some job levels under your belt, and some other resources, you may pursue a job combination that allows you to solo at higher levels. Be advised though, that these jobs are often lonely things, and expensive to boot: Making aquantinces and sharing risks is and always has been the fastest way to advance in the game, in the long run.

How do you work this crazy thing?
Spoiler:
Here is the lowdown on the controls:

First put the mouse away from you. Don't touch it while in game.

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Red is main menu. It has lots of option on two pages. It is pretty much everything you can do, so in combat it isn't particularly useful. If you have something targeted, hitting the enter key will bring up a context menu on the lower left. Navigate menus by using the arrow keys with your thumb.

Green is movement. 8 key for forward, the others for left, right, back. The five key in the center will change camera from first person to third person. If the camera is in first person, 4 and 6 will turn you. If it is in 3rd person they will move your character left and right. While in 3rd person, and a menu is not up, the arrow keys will handle camera control. While in first person and a menu is not up the arrow keys will turn your characters head.

If you are running forward, 7 is auto run. If you find yourself stuck walking slowly, you accidentally hit the / key, and hitting it again will allow you to run again. The * key on the numpad will let you heal. This will restore lost HP and MP.

interface2.jpg

Tab and escape for targeting. F1 through F6 will target yourself and members of your party. This is handy for mages.

Alt +1 through 0 and Ctrl +1 through 0 will allow you to use macros you have previously set up. There are a few default macros when you create a character, but those are useful pretty much only to show you how macros are set up. Delete them all and make your own by going to macros on page 2 of the main menu in the upper right of your screen by hitting '-' on the numpad, then the left or right arrow key once and the down arrow key to get to macros.

You have 20 books of macros to play with. Each book has 10 pages, with 20 macros on each page and six lines on each macro.

Which server should I join?
Carbuncle seems to be the server of choice for PA people so maybe consider going there! Or somewhere else! Anarchy!

Here's a list of who's on or has been on what server, though I don't know how accurate it is!
Spoiler:
(Server)
(PA forum name) - (FFXI character name)

Asura
Skullie - Skullie
SkannerJAT - Ramiah
SNES - Arkm
Bama - Dael
Grundlestiltskin - Treva
Kyanilis - Kyanilis
Varega - Varega
scygen - Scygen(?)
fightstrife - Paige
king awesome - Emol


Bahamut
Ultravisitor - Dose
Arcibi - Arcibi


Carbuncle
The Dude With Herpes - Kingshand
Just_Bri_Thanks - Bri
Xhero - Ormi
Pb - Ancalaehte
Smashism - Samash
Trevor Goodchild - Loras
ins0mniac - Dimen
Xanarios - Rikiru
Koopa_Paratroopa - Maus
Demitri Omni - Demitrion
RawrBear - Littlebear
RooX - Lumir
Dyvion - Dyvion
ProfMoriarty - Fefron
zanmatto - Misteyy
EdwinOfThay - Edwin
draw4wild - Kalbus


Diabolos
WillisIVIIX - Gynin


Kujata
Murphy - Murphie


Fenrir
Elimination - Vyles


Lakshmi
EricKei - Erickei (Hiatus)


Midgardsormr
Professor Snugglesworth - Jorginus
Stryker43 - Caldyen
ProfMoriarty - Ocilus


Pandemonium
seabass - Bassiwassi


Phoenix
Evil_Pig - Karli
GrinninBarrett - Ishmael


Quetzalcoatl
neville - Neville


Ragnarok
UltraMantisBlack - Ultramantis
RavynBlackheart - Vehnibi

Remora
Tcheldor - Tortalius
Freebytes - Freebytes
mystic_knight - Everitt
Xhaztol - Xhaztol
Aoi - Squidge

Shiva
The Laughing Man - Stompy

PM for additions or changes


Newbie FAQ that I'm totally copy/pasting from the old thread because I'm too lazy to write a new one
You've installed the game. You plugged in your keyboard. Now what?
I. New Player Guides
II. Resource Links
III. Consoles
IV. PC and third party addons
Spoiler:

If you have installed the game on PC and are playing it for the first time, make sure you run the config utility out of your start menu before playing the game. The game will be an ugly mess if you don't. If it is not in your start menu it can be found by going to your ffxi installation and then going to "...\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XI\ToolsUS\FINAL FANTASY XI Config.exe"

I. New Player Guides
SE's New Player Guide
These video's are hosted on the main FFXI site.
They contain easy to understand instructions for all platforms.
Watch all videos, click each section on the left column.

LBR's Gigantious Beginners Guide to Vana'diel
So this is a FFXI podcast, I'll admit the hosts are kind of annoying.
This super long podcast though has a lot of useful information to a new player.
Skim through it sometime while soloing out those first levels.

Forum Post New Player Guide
Kind of opinionated but lots of good macro tips and more.


II. Resource Links
These sites will help. Go here first if you have a question, a lot of basic (and advanced) info is out there for the taking, just look for it. Of course, ask away in this thread if you can't find an answer from these links.
Links by Grinnin!

FFXI Auction House Database
An online AH that lets you check prices and trends from any AH on any server from your browser.

FFXI Wikia
FFXI's Wiki. Just about everything you could possibly look up is in this Wiki.




BG FFXI Wiki
Another FFXI Wiki just in case the other one doesn't have what you're looking for.

Vana'diel Atlas
A site with all the maps and related information in the game. Useful if you're ever lost, or wondering what kind of treasure you can find in a zone.

Vana'diel Bestiary
Excellent source for finding out what monsters exist where; also a handy tool for deciding where to take your party to XP.

FFXI Firefox Plugin
Nifty Firefox plugin. Show FFXI times, searches, skillchains, and more.


III. Consoles
Playstation 2
Must have a fatty PS2
Need a HDD
Must have Network Adapter
USB keyboard
Playstation 3
BC confirmed for consoles that allow it
Xbox 360
Must have HDD
POL and FFXI take up about 7.5 gigs
USB keyboard
Messenger Kit mini keyboard doesn't function correctly. "/" doesnt work.
Free Silver membership required (no need for gold)

IV. PC and third party addons
Controller Issues
Most PC users prefer to plugin a USB controller and play mostly with that, although many players go without it. See which you are most comfortable with.

If you do use a controller, there are a few problems you may run into.
The Microsoft Xbox 360/Windows controller will have some issues. The MS drivers won't let the triggers work, which you need badly for macroes, trust me.

Xbox 360 Fan Drivers
These fan made drivers let you use the 360 controller correctly with the game.
They also allow you to use budget third party controllers too. Such as, mad catz, pelican, and so on.
MUST BE THE WIRED CONTROLLER, the wireless adapter WILL NOT work with this fan driver, thus making the wireless controller useless for FFXI.
VISTA USERS: Pay close attention to the direction on your install, it is a bit trickier.


Windower - Shhhhhhh
The first rule of windower is you do not speak about windower (in game, ever, I am serious). SE sees all third party software as potential hacks and if they can prove you use it, they will ban you.
Windower is essentially some plugins that provide a multitude of options outside of the default game. You can view other party members TP, distance from enemy, cooldown counters, and way more.
It can also increase the graphics for the game by tweaking the registry (which you can do by yourself at your own risk), so the game appears sharp.

How do you know it's safe to use?
There is no way that SE can detect you using the program, SE has never detected anyone and just banned them for using the program. Now if you run around Sandoria shouting I USE WINDOWER, I don't think I can guarantee your accounts safety.
Even if you discuss it in a party nobody will probably respond, so you are better off just not mentioning it in game, at all, ever. EVER.

How do I use it?
Download the program first. Unzip it to a more permanent location.
Open up "Launcher_GUI"
Click the Advanced box. Set the Overlay Resolution to whatever resolution you want FFXI running at (desktop resolution).
Under: Registery > Background, is where you can change the texture sharpness. Make sure they both match. If X is greater than your background resolution it will create an in game AA effect. Nifty, AND HOW!
Now launch FFXI from this launcher from now on.

I also recommend the DrawDistance plugin to cut down on the fog in game and the infobar plugin to show you enemy details.

Higher Resolution Sprites - UI icon's
Brandson first made some higher res sprites for the game and Emiko has recently taken up where he left off. These icons IMO are clearer than the FFXI default icons and much more clean looking. There is also a widescreen version so no more icon stretching.

In game map replacements
Another old project of Brandson continued by Emiko. Replaces in game maps with more detailed variants that include path information, NM spawns and more.

ApRadar - The third party minimap!
If I could marry a plugin it would be this one. Simply unzip and open when you have FFXI running. It will display a minimap of your current location. Also displays maps regardless if you own them or not, so useful.

I made a series of youtube vids back in the day showing what some different areas in the game look like. Give them a watch if you like:

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And now, here is Kingshand talking about helpful websites:
Spoiler:
So, I was going through my bookmarks to cleanup my bookmark bar and thought I'd share some of the more useful FFXI links I use quite a lot while playing:

FFXI Timer This thing I leave up constantly while I'm playing. It uses your system time settings and displays the upcoming moon phases, element for the day and upcoming days, and what real time they'll be;<<<Snip>>>

FFXI AH Exactly what it says. Infinitely more useful now with linked AH's, but it's always been a major tool. <<<Snip>>>

FFXIclopedia FFXI Wiki. Pretty self explanatory. Virtually anything you might want to know can be found here.<<<Snip>>>

MithraPride Chocobo Race Schedule If you're looking for a certain item (usually the xp pages) from the chocobo "races" you sometimes see when going to a chocobo stable in town (the NPC will ask you for a favor, etc), this site will tell you when you can find said race to get what reward and what the required time is.<<<Snip>>>

FFXI Atlas Exactly what the name implies. Maps. And with a lot more detail than the in-game maps. You can turn on/off a lot of the options to see what you need to see.

OP shamelessly stolen, but modified a bit!
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RIFT: FREE TO PLAY RIGHT NOW. Never stop transferring

October 28, 2012, 6:24 pm
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2.3: EMPYREAL ASSAULT IS OUT NOW!
NOW FREE TO PLAY!

What is Rift?

Rift is an MMORPG set in the fantasy world of Telara, which is at the focal point of different planes (worlds). Through the actions of the Dragon of Death Regulos, these worlds have now invaded Telara in search of Sourcestone, causing rifts to open and poison the world. Opposing Regulos and the other Dragons are two factions: the Guardians and the Defiants. The conflict between these two factions serves as another source of tension and gameplay. Fuck that shit, factions are dumb. As long as you play on a PVE server, there's no more factional divide, as of 1.10! Play whatever the fuck character you want, it doesn't matter beyond where you start and what your capitol is. Also what some Ascended skills are called. Players have the role of Ascended: resurrected soldiers whose task is to defeat the forces of Regulos and cleanse Telara forever of his threat.

Also this pretty lady named Crucia.


Why play Rift?

Because it is the best goddamn managed game in MMOs right now, and Trion deserves every single red cent you put towards gaming. Let me explain.

Rift is the first released game by the relatively new company Trion Worlds. Trion put Rift on the map with a fantastic beta which was relatively bug-free, amazing community support, interesting open-world gameplay mechanics like the eponymous rifts and Zone Invasions, and a truly interesting skill and character progression system.

Since its release, Rift has had 12 major updates, each containing numerous quality-of-life changes, new dungeons, 3 new 20-man raids, 3 new 10-man raids, loads of new lore, new locations to explore, and new ways to play and interact with the rest of the playerbase. All told, we've gotten probably a full expansion's worth of new and interesting content over the span of a year and a half, and this was all for free and delivered once every 1.5 to 2 months.

Every cent you spend on the upgrades in the store goes directly to support Rift's development. That spider mount (and other stuff) you just bought? That didn't go towards Activision's profit line, that went directly to making the next raid $10 better.

So... Storm Legion? What's all that about?

Storm Legion is Rift's first titled expansion. Storm Legion brings with it a whole laundry list of stuff, and that list goes here:

-TWO NEW CONTINENTS ravaged by the planes, Dusken and Brevane. Crucia has fled the main continent of Telara and flown across the sea, and it's up to the Ascended to follow her and dismantle the mechanical armies of the Storm Legion.
-7 NEW DUNGEONS
-3 NEW RAIDS
-NEW CHRONICLE
-NEW SOULS for every class (detailed below)
-NEW CAPITOL CITY for both "factions".
-LEVEL CAP RAISE to 60
-Higher levels in CRAFTING
-Account-wide and simplified PLANAR ATTUNEMENT
-CAPES that look kickin' rad
-PLAYER HOUSING, otherwise known as DIMENSIONS.
-Plus new items, artifacts, mounts, pets, and other stuff.
-At least one GODDAMN COLOSSUS

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Well shit, sign me up!

http://www..riftgame.com

What's All This About Free To Play?

As of June 12th, the game is now completely free to play. There are extremely minor "quality of life" limitations to free players, but nothing locks you out of content.

F2P limitations:
-Only 3 bag slots
-Only 2 Character slots
-No Storm Legion souls (more on the souls below!), though this can be bought (and really really should)
-Limited to 1000 platinum and have certain restrictions on chatting, specifically whispers as I understand it

If you spend the equivilent of a month's subscription in the cash shop, or you have ever previously subscribed to the game, this next bit is important!

Previous owners/subscribers of Rift receive:
-5 bag slots (this is the normal amount of slots)
-4 (?) character slots
-Owners of Storm Legion have access to the Storm Legion souls
-After spending the equivilent of a month's sub in the shop, or if you've previously subscribed, you'll receive an item called Account Extension free from the store. This removes the lock on plat and chatting. ABSOLUTELY GET THIS ASAP. Everyone will need to do this, even current subscribers! It's just a game system thing that needs to happen.

Subscribers get a metric ton of extra shit!

+10% mount speed
+15% ALL currency gain
Daily activated bonuses to dungeon/raid/PVP token gain
Daily activated bonuses to XP
Daily activated bonuses to PVP and PVE reputation
Instant access to class trainers, bankers (personal and guild)
Discount on the Cash Shop

What's for sale in the Cash Shop? This isn't a Pay-to-Win scenario, is it?

Nope!

Trion is staunchly against any pay-to-win mechanics through the store, and as such have kept best-in-slot weapons and armor away from being purchased with Credits. That doesn't mean you can't buy SOME statted gear, however.

For Sale:
-Costume weapons and armor
-Statted weapons and armor, a couple tiers down from best-in-slot (basically, you can buy expert gear and immediately get into a raid at level 60 but you aint gonna be good)
-Consumable boosts, like increases to token, money, or reputation gain
-Mounts
-Pets
-Dimension items (player housing stuff)
-Quality of life changes (more bag slots, role slots, and wardrobe slots)
-Character changes, including name, faction, gender, and race
-Lockboxes (which, while they do include some relic-quality gear, are not statted NEARLY high enough to really be considered comparable)

What's NOT For Sale:
-Money
-Top-tier items
-Spatial Awareness
-Winning
-Common Sense


Factions!
REMEMBER: FACTIONS DONT LIMIT WHO YOU CAN PLAY WITH AS LONG AS YOU'RE ON A PVE SERVER!

The Guardians

The Guardians are the chosen of Telara's gods, the Vigil. After the tyrant Aedraxis called forth power from the Plane of Death and devastated Telara, the Vigil chose the greatest souls who fell that day to be harbingers of the next era. A golden age awaits, but Telara must first be saved; by deed, by example, and by the sword. Its people must be redeemed, its corruptors purged, before the world can truly be safe. Guardian races are Mathosians (pale, regular looking humans), High Elves (you know what these guys look like) and Dwarves (ugly short people with lots of hair).

The Defiants

The Defiant do not care whether the gods abandoned the world or not. To them, this entire planar convergence disaster is the gods' fault in the first place. Indeed, as soon as things went from bad to worse, the gods suddenly and inexplicably disappeared. They utilize technology powered by the magical sourcestones to fight against the Dragons. Defiant races are Eth (humans with Middle-Eastern features), Kelari (kinda like Dark Elves I guess, all purple with big black eyes), and Bahmi (big blue and purple behemoths, all muscle).

The Classes

So you've got your basic Warriors, Rogues, Clerics and Mages. Two hitty types, two spell types. That's cool! But clerics aren't all going to be healers, and rogues aren't all going to be backstabbers. You make your character with whatever 3 souls you want, spending Soul Points on any combination of the three, to make your own specified class. Wanna warp around AND shoot arrows and people's faces? That's totally doable. Wanna fire off giant fireballs, then heal your party or raid with the power of Life? That's doable too.

Some classes have better synergy than others, but the upcoming expansion is supposed to make them even more balanced, hopefully leading to lots of different types of Rangers, or Justicars, or Beastmasters. Basically, the choice is up to you on how you want to level.

Oh, and do you think you might have made a mistake? No problem. Just respec for less than a cup of Telaran coffee and set up a new role.

Find that your Tank spec, while fine for all those mobs over there you just slaughtered, isn't going to work for this big tool up in front of you? Instantly switch your specialization to one of 5 custom others that you setup and sneak around them using stealth.

If you have any questions about classes, there's a really good chance we can answer them.

I'm about to start playing right now! What do I choose?

Glad you asked.

First, choose the US server Deepwood. It's Player Versus Environment. You can still participate in Player Versus Player out in the world, ugh, but you'll mainly just playing against the game

Next, pick which faction you want to be a part of. FACTION CHOICE ONLY AFFECTS YOUR STARTING AREA AND THE FIRST FEW ZONES. AND WHAT PVP QUEUES YOU JOIN. SORTA. It does not limit what guilds you can join or what groups (dungeon or raid) you can be a part of. Everyone plays together!

Next, you'll pick your class.

-Rogues are DPS, tanks, and offer support healing. They are not main healers and you cannot queue as healing when playing as a Rogue.
-Warriors are DPS, tanks, and offer support.
-Clerics can queue as everything! But you'll usually be tanks or healing. Generally healing.
-Mages can queue as DPS, healing, or support.

Now you'll go through the starter area. The tutorials will tell you how to do Souls and stuff. When you've finished that and you're in the game world proper, pick a guild! Guild play is the best.

GUILDS

GOON SQUAD:
Send a whisper or an in-game mail from a mailbox to Asraa and I'll get you invited to the guild! We're ALWAYS looking for new people to come play with us and the guild is seriously booming right now with 50-60 people on at night, most leveling up their own new characters! This guild is not an official PA guild, because the official PA guild fizzled out over a year ago. Right now, the guild is about 10% PA, 90% Something Awful.

If you have a problem playing with Something Awful players there are many guilds out there recruiting. It's ok. I get it! Their sense of humor isn't for everyone. But what do you do if you want to play with someone else? Well...

SUPERIOR BEINGS:
Send an in-game mail or tell to Aubren (aka @Squid56) if you'd like to play with this friends-and-family guild. Squiddy is in charge of this one, and anything you've gotta say should go to him!

KNIGHTS OF ARCADIA:
...theoretically still exists? I have no clue who's still in charge or even where they are. Maybe Faeblight? /shrug
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[DFO] Dungeon Fighter Online Global, Open Beta (Available now!)

March 20, 2015, 7:28 pm
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IT'S BACK
Dungeon Fighter Online Global trailer
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Avenger 2nd Awakening Trailer
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Monk 2nd Awakening Trailer
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Random PVP Video!
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Uh...what's all this then?
Dungeon Fighter Online! Dungeon Fighter Online, or DFO, is the English language release of Neople's Dungeon & Fighter, also known as Arad Senki in Japan. It's a free to play MMO, with its claim to fame being the unique gameplay. DFO's gameplay is described as an homage to old school 2D beat 'em ups. Characters have access to basic attacks, and as they advance they begin to unlock skills, which can be used via hotkey or special command inputs. Characters can also unlock cancels, letting them string together their basic attacks and skills into devastating combos.
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Sounds interesting! Where do I sign up?
You can sign up and download the client here.
If you played in the alpha and want to retrieve your characters, remember to sign up using the Facebook account you linked earlier.

Wait, it’s back?
That’s right! The English language version of DFO was originally published by Nexon, but shut down in June, 2013. But Neople, the original developers and publisher in Korea, want to bring it back to the global audience! They are launching Dungeon Fighter Online Global as an open beta on March 24th, 2015.

I'm a DFO veteran, what new content is going to be in DFO global?
DFO Global will be launching with some content from kDnF season 4. In terms of classes, that means it will come with:
Male Slayers, Female and Male Gunners, Female and Male Fighters, Female and Male Mages, Priests, Thief (Necromancer & Rogue), and the two everted classes, Dark Knight and Creator.
Notable content that is in kDnF but not in DFO Global's Open Beta - Female Slayers, Knights, Kunoichi and Shadow Dancers (Thief subclasses), 2nd Awakenings and level cap at 85.

But more importantly, Neople has confirmed that DFO Global will launch with “Great Metastasis”, a content update that completely revamped how Arad looks, with all new dungeons and quests for levels 1-54.
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Character Progression
A Guide Brought to You by @RonaldoTheGypsy
Spoiler:
1-15
During this time, your character is a base class and has access to a general mixture of skills that allow you to understand how it plays in comparison to others. During this time, you’ll familiarize yourself with your character’s basic skillset. Dash attacks, combo strings and various basic maneuvers are taught in this period. Typically, one will be able to learn about the four major weapon-types for their class in this time and whether said weapon is physical or magical and how the speed and reach of these weapons compare.

Players should eagerly spend skill points (SP) to experiment with and understand the fundamentals of a class and discover what class they’d like to advance toward when they reach the appropriate level (if they don’t already know) and at 15 (previously 20) they will be given a string of relatively simple quests to advance to a superior, specialized class, called a subclass.

Classes typically have four subclasses to choose from, but the Male Mage and Thief only have two subclasses. Subclasses share the same fundamental skillset but can have radically different playstyles. The Slayer, easily one of the most popular classes, has four choices and all of them vary wildly.

The First Sub-Class Selection
I’ll leave tier lists to … people who make tier lists. Something that players SHOULD understand when deciding which sub-class to choose is whether the sub-class uses PHYSICAL or MAGICAL damage and whether it is a primarily FIXED, PERCENTAGE or MIXED damage ratios character. First, though, I will explain the variances in the damage ratios.

Fixed Damage
Plain and simple, fixed damage is based on the level of your character, the level of your skill and the amount of STR (if physical) or INT (if magical) your character has, to a degree of about 250 points of STR/INT meaning another 100% bonus damage with fixed damage. Fixed damage characters are prized for their ease of entry, relying less on gear optimization than percentage characters.

Percentage
Skills of percentage damage characters will display as … well, a percentage. Whether it’s 50% weapon damage per hit or 2000% weapon damage per hit, percentage relies heavily on superb itemization and typically rewards individuals who can achieve particularly good enchantments on gear.

Mixed
Most characters aren’t going to have EXCLUSIVELY fixed or percentage damage. Further, even among skills, some will use a combination of both values to build damage. A skill with mixed damage will say something like
(fixed value) + (percentage value)
and strike a middle-ground between the two, benefitting from gear but not being entirely dependent on it.

16-50
After taking the plunge and choosing a subclass, you will be refunded all of the SP you used and generally given a few new skills as well to start your new adventure as whatever sub-class you selected.

From here, players should start to focus and get an idea of what abilities they want to pick out of their subclass to master as they move toward awakening. The best way to accomplish this is experimenting (or reading internet guides) via taking at least one point in abilities and toying with them in dungeons. You might find that, in spite of what others say, you prefer a different approach to a character than you thought. At 50, when you awaken, you’ll receive another refund of SP, so don’t feel overly awful if you invest in powers that you don’t find particularly useful at this point. Focus on learning combinations and the strengths/weaknesses of your class.

Awakening
This process takes place at a level where particular ‘Ancient’ dungeons become available. Typically, the process to awaken involves at least one run into one of these dungeons, which will make cooperation with other people necessary. Typically you’re asked to turn in several materials and then rubber stamped as a new, fancier class with access to an awakening active and passive skill.

Awakening skills are VERY expensive to level and whether one takes or ignores their awakening skill depends mostly on what class they choose. These active skills have a ten minute cooldown and require a chunk of resources and mana to use, typically being used in tandem against difficult bosses. These abilities vary in power from pretty much useless and not worth your points to absolute bulldozers that will make many challenges trivial. Be wary of awakening skill usage in team play, as other characters can (and will) move enemies out of your target and if you whiff, you whiff. Cooldown. Resources spent. Too bad.

51-70(85?)
Now it’s time to lock your build in and flex your character to their limits. The dungeons you do at this point will likely be incredibly difficult to solo if you’re doing them for experience. You will be constantly unlocking new forms of end-game content in the form of Otherverse (OV) and quests that require absurd amounts of materials for items of high quality. It’s likely that you won’t do all of these quests at this point, don’t feel bad about saving content for later. It will take increasingly large amounts of experience to level as you near the peak, but the game tends to provide items to keep the process from being cruel. As long as you have an understanding of how your character works and can work in parties, most dungeons won’t be too difficult if you don’t push yourself on difficulties that you can’t handle. Most of the finesse of DFO comes from having good reactions and knowing how to avoid the attacks of bosses. Most characters, aside from the very lowest of low tier can handle their own weight in most content up until the very end.


Classes
This guy’s playlist has all of the subclass showcases, if you’re interested.
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Slayer E0JCqgO.jpg
Swordsmen who carry the demon Kazan in their left arm.
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Blade Master KzbyNEv.png
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Slayers who ignore Kazan and focus on their swordsmanship. The only Slayer subclass that can use Lightsabres, Blade Masters are skilled at used all 5 weapon-types available to Slayers, with their moves gaining special properties depending on which weapon-type is equipped. Can rapidly switch between weapons for cool weapon switch combos. Percentage, Physical.

Soul Bender Qq5Xwgz.png
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Slayers who learn how to master Kazan and other demons. Can summon a variety of demons to aid them in battle. Percentage, Magical.

Berserker oMdwi3b.png
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Slayers who succumb to Kazan's influence, and become warriors driven by bloodlust and rage. Spends HP on some of their skills, and can recovery HP through killing. Has lots of ways to inflict bleed on enemies, and gets more powerful against bleeding foes. Mostly Fixed, Physical.

Asura vW84kHB.png
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Slayers who make a bargain with Kazan, and trade their eyes for immense power. Can attack from a far with magical 'waves'. Naturally immune to blinds, and very durable. Mostly Fixed, Magical

Fighter (F) u3w5xHA.jpg
Martial artists seeking to perfect their craft.
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Nen Master djtiixc.png
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Fighters who have learned how to harness their inner “Nen” energy. They possess powerful buffs and utility skills, as well as a strong, light-elemental offense. Percentage, Magical.

Striker qAM7qQX.png
Spoiler:
Fighters who master physical strikes. The only F.Fighter subclass that can use Boxing Gloves. Delivers devastatingly powerful hits. Percentage, Physical.

Brawler 7dQIklG.png
Spoiler:
Fighters who will do anything to win a fight. Fights dirty, using poison, bricks, nets and mines. Hybrid.

Grapplerxh2FvR9.png
Spoiler:
Fighters who focus on throws and grabs. Grapplers have fantastic control over their foes, and their grabs work on otherwise unthrowable enemies. Fixed, Physical.

Fighter (M) gikLbcX.jpg
Martial artists seeking to perfect their craft.
Spoiler:
M.Nen Master 4wvnICU.png
Spoiler:
Fighters who have learned how to harness their inner “Nen” energy. Have a stronger offense but less utility compared to Female Nen Masters. Percentage, Magical.

M.Striker SwV8o2O.png
Spoiler:
Fighters who master physical strikes. The only M.Fighter subclass that can use Boxing Gloves. Delivers devastatingly powerful hits. His skillset is more 'foot-based' than the F.Striker's. Percentage, Physical.

M.Brawler 1UYUFCn.png
Spoiler:
Fighters who will do anything to win a fight. Fights dirty, using poison, bricks, nets and mines. Focuses on throwing objects, so fights from a longer range than the F.Brawler. Hybrid.

M.Grappler iFg4iG3.png
Spoiler:
Fighters who focus on throws and grabs. Grapplers have fantastic control over their foes, and their grabs work on otherwise unthrowable enemies. Fixed, Physical.

Priest Np8Io6Z.jpg
Holy men who have devoted their lives to the eradication of evil.
Spoiler:
Crusader 8wltpIe.png
Spoiler:
Priests armed with devotion and powerful holy magic. Has access to very strong healing and buff spells, as well as offensive magic with strong utility. Fixed, Magical.

Monk vILhuva.png
Spoiler:
Priests who like engage in good old fashioned pugilism. Eschews the giant weapons favored by other priest subclasses, instead fighting with his bare-knuckles. Attacks and moves much faster than his fellow Priests, and is able to dart and weave in and out of combat and deliver lightning fast boxing combinations that keep his opponent staggered. Percentage, Physical.

Exorcist T8yxdpt.png
Spoiler:
Priests armed with talismans and incantations, ready to exorcise demons the hard way. Has access to a multitude of skills, and can be built as a powerful physical or magical attacker. Percentage.

Avenger zuD0wpK.png
Spoiler:
Priests who were infused with demonic energy, but continue to fight evil and maintain their faith, even as they were outcast from their priestly order. They fight with shadowy magic and can temporarily turn themselves into a powerful demon. Magical, Percentage.

Gunner (M) cbynsVw.jpg
Long-ranged combatants from Empyrean.
Spoiler:
Ranger KKrocAM.png
Spoiler:
Gunners who fight up close, using a combination of kicks and well placed revolver shots. Percentage, Physical.

Launcher hawIVu0.png
Spoiler:
Gunners who use a variety of heavy weapons, such as gatling guns, flame throwers and lasers. Fixed, Physical.

Mechanic 2z3kgwr.png
Spoiler:
Gunners who call on a variety of hi-tech gizmos and friends to fight by their side. Percentage, Magical.

Spitfire 4tPDiq3.png
Spoiler:
Gunners who utilize magic infused bullets and grenades. Hybrids.

Gunner (F) kJyyNJg.jpg
Long-ranged combatants from Empyrean.
Spoiler:
F.Ranger irHey3Q.png
Spoiler:
Gunners who fight up close, using a combination of kicks and well placed revolver shots. Percentage, Physical.

F.Launcher d8IIKqW.png
Spoiler:
Gunners who use a variety of heavy weapons, such as gatling guns, flame throwers and lasers. Fixed, Physical.

F.Mechanic YBmdpLX.png
Spoiler:
Gunners who call on a variety of hi-tech gizmos and friends to fight by their side. Percentage, Magical.

F.Spitfire RZ1T4lo.png
Spoiler:
Gunners who utilize magic infused bullets and grenades. Hybrids.

Mage (F) 859rZuy.jpg
Magic-users from Pandemonium. Generally ill-suited to close combat.
Spoiler:
Elementalist jTwQI2Y.png
Spoiler:
Mages who form a bond with nature, and can call upon the elements to strike down their foes. Can mix and match spells from the 4 elements, and create amazing combinations. Percentage, Magical.

Summoner iQsK8MW.png
Spoiler:
Mages who call upon spirits and beasts to aid them. Can summon a semi-autonomous posse, and give them buffs and direction. Fixed, Magical.

Witch xujS56w.png
Spoiler:
Mages who specialize in goofy magical contraptions. The only mage subclass that can use Broomsticks. Her attacks have chances to fail, or be a “sleeper success”. Can ride around in a giant drill pretending to be Dr. Robotnik. Fixed, Magical.

Battle Mage ZpWFu1E.png
Spoiler:
Mages who like fight up close, augmenting their close combat skills with their magic. Successful attacks generate magical Chasers, which buff the Battle Mage and can be flung at enemies as an attack or consumed to perform a devastating Chaser Press. Larger combos generate bigger and better Chasers. Hybrid

Mage (M) JHwl6Rl.jpg
Magic-users from Pandemonium, with the power of Immortality.
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Elemental Bomber 9Y0Yvzu.png
Spoiler:
Mages who fight using elementally infused magical orbs. Percentage, Magical.

Glacial Master wbhBB9q.png
Spoiler:
Mages with mastery over water and ice. Percentage, Magical.

Thief yiXOlG9.jpg
Swift and deadly Dark Elves.
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Rogue 8jdY1Ky.png
Spoiler:
Highly mobile, combo oriented warriors. Generates “Contact Points” through usage of certain skills and cancels, and can spend them to empower some of her skills. The only class that can double jump, with lots of skills oriented towards aerial combat. Percentage, Physical.

Necromancer 1h6tBwU.png
Spoiler:
Masters of the dead, who fight alongside their undead allies, Nicholas and Vallacre. Nicholas acts as a powerful summon who fights along side you, while Vallacre manifests by possessing the Necromancer and transforming her traditional attacks. Fixed, Magical

Everted classes?
Everted classes are unique classes. They are visually similar to M.Slayers and F.Mages, but have unique features and no subclasses. They are new to DFO, so good information about them is lacking.
Spoiler:
Dark Knight tajsPVZ.png
Dark Knights have a large list of active skills, drawing on skills from all of the M.Slayer's subclasses. The Dark Knight can string these skills together into 6-piece 'auto' combos.

Creator 3yG3JsN.png
Creators move using WASD and attack using the mouse.
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[Faldon est.1997] Free Oldskool RPG for fans of Runescape & Diablo

April 4, 2015, 4:58 am
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Hi guys, hope I am in the right place here and that this will appeal to a few of you.
Faldon player of 10 years checking in here. We’re currently looking for a new bunch of players to join us. Faldon is an isometric RPG that it seems time has forgotten. We currently have about 50 active players, mostly from Holland, Brazil, USA and the U.K so at times it can be really quiet, the community is trying very hard to change that though. I’m branching out here as the community is really hungry for new players and the game is still great, despite its flaws.

Faldon has well over 440 items to find, use and trade, 150 monsters, 60 spells and 30+ skills to raise (with plenty of crafting and non-violent skills too). There’s also no level cap or class-restrictions. I’ve heard a few people compare Faldon to Ultima Online, Tibia & even Runescape so if you ever enjoyed those games then perhaps Faldon is for you. It’s free to play and 90% of items in the game can be dropped from monsters, so it’s not p2w as such.

Faldon takes a little time to get your bearings and figure out what to do since there has never been many ‘beacons’ or hints as to where you should go. The game can be unforgiving, yet incredibly rewarding when you progress. There is a party function so levelling in small groups against very strong mobs is totally a possibility. Hope to see some of you in game.


Amongst many other things Faldon has the following to offer:

Over 440 items to obtain, use and trade.
• Over 60 spells available for mages and battle-mages.
• Over 150 different types of monsters spread out across the vast maps of Faldon.
• A unique title system where other players recognise you for your highest raised skill. Criminal and Murderer titles let you know who to avoid in town.
• Player based market as well as plenty of NPCs to sell your items to.
• Over 25 guild halls available to rent, spread over Faldon’s many maps.
• No level caps.
• A diverse player base. We pride ourselves in having players from all around the world. We have many Dutch, Brazilian, American, Scandinavian and British players. Everyone is welcome.

Hope to see some of you on soon. If you have any questions I'll be here to answer them. Cheers :)

youtube.com/watch?v=DR5wVb3uwys

reddit.com/r/faldon

faldonrpg.com
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[Urban Dead] If TITZ hits Mycock enough times, WANG will explode all over them.

March 16, 2010, 7:11 pm
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First thread.
Second thread.

Op lovingly stolen from Colt

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In death, the city stirs. Its borders still locked down after a sudden government quarantine three years ago, Malton's trapped civilians make their way through the derelict buildings, surviving the changing seasons to rebuild their fragmented society from the rubble upwards. Military cleanup squads patrol the empty streets, stationed in the city for the long haul, while embedded scientific groups continue the experiments that brought them here.

And the dead rise up and thrive, trailing through the ruined streets of the city, milling between buildings and clawing through makeshift barricades and diversions, reclaiming the city as their own.

Urban Dead is a "low tech" MMORPG that you play in your browser. It's the best brower game ever as it only takes 10-15 minutes a day to play. It is a post-apocalyptic zombie RPG with two sides to it: Survivors and Zombies. Survivors do just that: survive. They have no other fixed objective other then to try to live to see the next day. Zombies try to what every zombie loves best: eat Survivor brains. This is the best zombie game I've ever played. It is the closest thing that get's to all those people's "dream game" of simply surviving the zombie apocalypse. It's yourself, an open town, and a whole fuckload of zombies that want to eat YOU.

Urban Dead takes place in the fictional city of Malton. Malton is located in no where specific. While it has a very American city feel, there are also places that show it could be located somewhere in Europe. The bars, for example, are all named in a European style. It has no relation to the two towns named Malton that exist in real life. Malton has been sealed off to the rest of the world due to a virus of unknown origin that has caused the dead to rise. The number of dead grew rapidly and now the remaining people in Malton are trying to survive until...well, some form of hope arrives. Until then, they need to deal with the dead that now populate the city. You are one surivor among many. When you start playing Urban Dead you can pick one of several classes of Survivor, and they all come in three catagories: Military, Scientist, and Civilian.


sging7.jpg
Military classes represent the military forces left behind during the quarentine. They also have two of the better starting classes in the game and one of the worst. Survivors with the Military character class pay 75 XP for all Military skills, 150 XP for Science skills, and 100 XP for all other skills.

Private
Private's are the basic soldier. They start with Basic Firearms Training which allows them to hit more often with all firearms, and a pistol with some ammo to start killing right away. It's a good starting class. However, one problem you'll be facing early on is that guns take ammo, and you will be spending a lot of time searching for more after you run out of your initial two clips. Like all Military classes, they also pay a hefty price for Science skills.

Medic
Medic's are healers, and the worst class to begin as in the Military tree. They only start with a pistol and a first aid kit, and there starting skill is First Aid which is a loss of EXP early on. While you heal 5hp more then everyone else, you don't get any more EXP if you do. As a Medic you will spend a lot of time searching for first aid kits and wasting actions in combat because of your poor combat skills. I started as a Medic and I'm telling you NOT to start as one.

Scout
Scout's are a very fast moving class. They start out with the amazing Free Running skill. This allows you to enter a building from other buildings, avoiding the streets all together. However, you have no combat skills. Because of your manuverability you have a better chance of surviving for a longer time then other characters tho. My reccomendation is to find a building you will have easy access to get into always and use it to get back into hiding when your done fighting zombies outside.


2qwo3ud.jpg
Scientists are characters who worked for the mysterious NecroTech company that worked out of Malton. The two Scientist classes are so-so starting classes. EXP can come easy for them, but combat will still be hard. Survivors with the Scientist character class pay 75 XP for all Science skills, 150 XP for Military skills, and 100 XP for all other skills.

NecroTech Lab Assistant
Lab Assistants are decent to start with. They get good EXP by "tagging" zombies with there DNA Extractor, which they can only use at the begining because of the skill NecroTech Employment. They have no combat skills however, and like all Scientists, Military skills are the most expensive. They will also have a hard time getting inside buildings since Free Running is also a Military skill.

Doctor
So what is the difference between a Doctor and a Medic? A Doctor starts with the Diagnosis skills, which lets him see the HP of all injured Survivors. It makes healing a lot easier since you don't have to waste actions checking everyone to see if they are injured like a Medic has to. They start with two first aid kits. They have the same weaknesses as the Lab Assistant.


25q90f4.jpg
Civilians represent the every day citizens of Malton. Some are civil servants while others are just people. Civilians have two GREAT starting classes and one TERRIBLE one. Worse then the Medic. Civilians pay 100 XP for all skills, a huge advantage in the long run.

Cop
Cop's are up there with the three best starting classes. They start with the skill Basic Firearms Training and start with a pistol, flak jacket, and a radio. They come combat ready, but suffer the same problem as the Private: they need ammo. They are more flexable then the Private, however, because all skills for them cost 100 XP.

Firefighter
The Firefighter is the best starting class in the game. Your starting skill gives you the most combat ready and easiest to use character. Firefighter's start with Axe Proficiency which makes it easter to his with his starting weapon, the fire axe, which is the best melee weapon in the game. They don't need to find ammo like a Private or a Cop, and they can level up within two days to get Hand To Hand Combat which makes them a zombie chopping machine. If you are just starting in Urban Dead, pick a Firefighter.

Consumer
Consumers are so bad I forgot to talk about them when I posted this. They have the starting skill Shopping, which lets you find things in malls easier but that is about it. They have no combat ability, a random melee weapon to start with, and a cell phone which you can't even use right away because if your new, you don't know anyone to call. Don't be a Consumer.


oje534.jpg
Zombies are the enemy. Most of the time. You can also start out as a zombie! Zombies have a completly seperate set of skills open to them. You should get to know them since, at some point, you may find yourself as one of them. Zombies have access to the zombie skills tree, and pay 100 XP for all zombie skills. Click the image above for a full read on what the starting zombie can do.


Now, you may have seen me toss around a few terms like skills and EXP. Well, now I'll explain all that to you with a screenshot of the game.

1zd0xuv.jpg

Starting with the right side of the screen on the top, you have your area description. Pretty self-explanatory. Down from there are your actions for the immediate area. Down from there is your characters inventory. Unless your a pack rat, you probably won't be carrying around that much stuff. On the left side starting on top is a grid of the city. You play on that. The top bar is the name of the suburb you are in. The building in the middle is always the building you are at. You can move to any of the buildings in that 6x6 grid and when you do the view will move and you will find more buildings. Under that if your characters status. Every character in the game starts with 50 HP and you can gain 10 more from a skill (Body Building). Your EXP is counted in this box too. The most important thing here, more then your HP, is your Action Points (AP). You have a max of 50 AP and it regenerates at one every half hour. Every time you move, shoot, heal, talk, reload, enter, exit, do something, you use at least one AP. Under that are some menu options, but the most important in the Buy Skills menu. Here you can buy more skills for EXP. Any character can use any skill, you just need the EXP for it. If you start as a Scientist, you can still buy Military skills, etc. The second most important link is the Wiki button. The Wiki has EVERYTHING. If you want information on the suburb you are in, go to the wiki. If you want info on a certain group of people, check the wiki. It's all there.


So, now that I've presented you with everyone you need to know before playing Urban Dead, what about when you first start? Well, there are some things already written about that. First Day in Malton is a good guide to check out. The Urban Dead Wiki has a guide section right on the front page. As said before, it's the best place for Urban Dead information.

I'm done talking. Click the logo at the top to get to Urban Dead. Go kill some zombies.


--
I'm no longer keeping a list of names here because, at 75 members, it's just too big.

Looking for some P-A'ers? To add contacts use http://profiles.urbandead.info/ to look up their UD ID#. Enter the person's name, and click on it once the search comes up positive to get to their profile.

Where are we?
We've set up a group called We Are Nice Guys. To join, just go to Settings and type our name into the Group box. Click on that link to find our revive point policy and radio frequency. We are establishing a new base in Mockridge Heights at the Mycock Building.

As a reminder to everyone, the group name is We Are Nice Guys, NOT WANG.


Suburb Notes
The Mycock Building is EHB, so we have two entry points. One is the Perriott Museum, directly east, and the other is Club Androwes, southwest.

The closest mall is in Stanbury Village. Stanbury Village is one suburb northeast of us.

While zombie activity is somewhat low in Mockridge Heights, if you go east or northeast you can find plenty of activity, more then Scarletwood.

Our revive point is the graveyard 2 steps east of Mycock and 1 step north of a hospital.


--

How to make your game awesome if you are using Firefox:

1. Go to http://udtoolbar.mozdev.org/
2. Install udtoolbar
3. Shoot Zombies.
Spoiler:
Screenshot1.jpg
That is an older screenshot however, and the inventory won't look like that. Credit to Nocren for the find.

Fixing UDToolbar:
Spoiler:
Here is what you need to do to make the toolbar work on the latest version of Firefox. What you need to do is download udtoolbar59 and then unzip it with your Zip tool of choice, I prefer 7zip. Now you need to find the file in the first folder called install.rdf and open that up in Notepad. Then you just have to change the first value to the second: 
em:maxVersion="3.0.*"
to 
em:maxVersion="3.8.*"
You can also use a value like 4.0.* to future proof it a bit. Now you just save install.rdf back into the xpi, and open the xpi file with Firefox to install it.

But while you are in there you might as well fix some of the other shit that's broke. For instance, off the top of my head the link the Map button takes you to is dead. To fix that open up browser.xul which is located at \udtoolbar59.xpi\chrome\udinvgraphenhance.jar\content\. In it you will find the following value: 
<toolbarbutton id="udmap" tooltiptext="City Map of Malton"  oncommand="urbandead_LoadURL('http://redrum.soul-fantasy.net/map.php')"/>
</toolbarpalette>
You can change that URL to whatever still working map you like, for instance the wiki map

If anybody else finds any more broken shit in the Toolbar I can post fixes, but as I don't use the toolbar myself someone will need to point out the broken shit so I can find it and fix it.

There is also UDBrain, a MySQL database to keep track of the barricade status of all the buildings in Malton.
Spoiler:
screen.jpg

A handy little map I found one late night. It has a location finder, route planner, and notations of locations in suburbs. Not a Firefox addon.

City of Malton (Link is dead as of 3/17/2010)
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[COX] Mapserver Disconnect

August 31, 2012, 12:12 pm
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http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/news_archive/thank_you.php
Farewell, from all of us at Paragon Studios
This morning we announced that Paragon Studios will be taking to the skies of City of Heroes for the last time.

In a realignment of company focus and publishing support, NCsoft has made the decision to close Paragon Studios. Effective immediately, all development on City of Heroes will cease and we will begin preparations to sunset the world's first, and best, Super Hero MMORPG before the end of the year. As part of this, all recurring subscription billing and Paragon Market purchasing will be discontinued effective immediately. We will have more information regarding a detailed timeline for the cessation of services and what you can expect in game in the coming weeks.

The team here at Paragon deserves special praise for all that we have accomplished over the last 5+ years. These developers are some of the most creative and talented people in the gaming industry. By now, we've all been given this news internally, but to anyone who may be reading this message after the fact; know that your hard work and dedication has not gone unappreciated or unnoticed. To any potential studios looking to grow your team; hire these people. You won't regret it.

To our Community,

Thank you. Thank you for your years of support. You've been with us every step of the way, sharing in our challenges, encouraging us to make City of Heroes better, more than everyone else thought it could be. We couldn't have come this far without you. I implore you all, focus on the good things of CoH and Paragon Studios. Don't dwell on the "how" or the "why", but rather join us in celebrating the legacy of an amazing partnership between the players and the development team.

Thank you, and I'll see you in the skies, one last time.

Andy Belford

Community Manager

Paragon Studios.

So it seems F2P wasn't enough to save City of Heroes.

I'm a bit upset by this. I don't play much anymore but I still love all my characters and buy costume bits for them all the time.
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[The Repopulation] Crafting so complex, it will blow your mind.*

April 14, 2015, 9:06 am
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*minds not guaranteed to be blown.

So, yeah, my last thread a couple months ago didn't fly too well. However! I have played around 700 hours of the game now and I have a lot of useful information to share! This is my first time making an OP this big, so please point out things that I may have missed. Here we go.

Main website: https://www.therepopulation.com/
Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/322300/

We are in Alpha 4!
There are bugs!
This is an Early Access title!

Hey, where are you going, come back!

Intro: When I first started playing I quit within 6 hours due to some bugs, the crafting system being overwhelming, and dying a significant number of times trying to do things outside or travel past the starting city. Then, the next day I came back and gave it another look. The crafting system was explained to me by another player, I got used to some of the bugs and a couple work arounds, and combat wise learned to run from battle when I had 2-3 mobs on me.
I'm not saying this will be your experience, but that's how things worked out for me.
    Some basic stuff:
  • Quality grades for produced goods go from F0 to A9, there is no E (it doesn't Exist)
  • Vehicles are bought from the AH and made by other players. Do not buy them from NPC's unless you want to spend lots of credits.
    Get them in the mail. Get it in your bag. Double click it to create it. Press \ to access your garage.
    To make an alias to spawn in your new ride on your hotbar, go to an empty hotbar slot and right click. Name the alias slot, type in the command /spawn vehicle 1, and choose an icon.
  • To send a tell to someone type /tell name, words (the comma is very important)
  • Dev post on the steam forums about pets
    http://steamcommunity.com.tw/app/322300/discussions/0/616199347860637906/?insideModal=1
  • Craftmap. A searchable out of game database that can help with understanding crafting.
    http://aena.at/craftmap/craftmap.html

Now! On to features!

Nations and Cities - some info is limited, will update
  1. A nation can be formed by any player that has 10,000 credits and using the /nation create command. You can choose to be allied with one of the two starting nations OWON (One World One Nation) or FPR (Free People's Republic) or you can go Rogue and be open to attack by every side.
  2. Your new nation will need a Control Center which costs 50,000 credits. This is the heart of your city and needs to be well defended. If it gets destroyed then, well siege warfare is removed currently (but was in) I'm assuming shit gets fucked.
  3. As of 15.2.1 (today!) Cities have levels they can progress through, NPCs that you can create for certain purposes (like item turn ins, quests, shops)
    Happiness levels too! If your NPCs of your city aren't getting their needs met your city won't reach a higher level. (I don't have personal experience with this, I'm citing forum posts.)
  4. Underground levels! This is totally new for 15.2.1. I'm told it's a huge subterranean level below your city's main ground plot that can be used for far more space once your city reaches a certain level.
  5. Mayors are assigned to each city by the Nation creator. They deal with NPC citizen happiness.
  6. Five levels of "Let's be nice or kills these dudes" to select from Ally to Nemesis.
  7. 99 Ranks for your nation each with a customizable name and setting.

Missions
  • If you level almost any skill npc's will take notice and give you missions relating to that skill. That being said there aren't a huge amount of custom missions yet, but if you say, level up cooking... you'll get more cooking related quests thrown at you by the generated system.
  • Depending how you treat the NPC during the mission conversation you'll get different better/worse outcomes.
  • Missions are mailed to you via your PDA. If you leave town and go to another city or zone, you'll almost instantly get missions from that zone's NPCs.
  • NPCs will talk about who did them right and who betrayed them. ( This isn't in yet as far as I've seen.)
  • Missions can be filtered for things like Combat only, Combat/Military, Trading made goods, and Any.
  • Not all missions are combat oriented.
  • Completing missions in a group will give further rewards that are automatically split up between the group. ( as far as I know missions cannot be shared yet.

Skills
  • First of all, no levels. There is no max level. No one's racing to 50 to get to endgame content. You are your skills, which there are 75 of with 14 tiers in each.
  • You don't need to even touch combat. Want to craft and only craft? Stay in town and place work orders through the digital (accessible anywhere) Auction House and have others collect mats you need for prices you set. Mail is also digital and will come straight to your character via your PDA.
  • Want to gather a variety of mining, tree, and fish nodes? Maybe fight some beasties in the wilds? Then pick from Melee: Blades, Axes, or Clubs. Shield... or not and Ranged Weaponry that goes from Automatic(long range AoE), Rifle, Aerosol (flame throwers), Shockgun (ZAPOW), and Pistol(s)
  • You want better abilities from your skill line? You won't earn them by leveling up, no sir. You gotta do missions for them (any mission type) after reaching a number cap in that skill's progression.
  • You'll also get SI or skill imprints from basically everything you do. This allows you to put skill points into abilities at a Skill Imprinting Machine. Like, if you want to learn Animal Handling, but there's no trainer for it in the starting city you're in ( there isn't :( ) stick a point of SI into that thing and you'll start to get base skills from it as rewards from missions.

Fittings

This stuff is pretty important. See, your armor and weapons? They're more or less cosmetic shells with base stats. Fittings go into slots in those shells that give them a wide, customizable, variation of stats and bonuses that make you, you. In other words, if you want to not die against the alien menace out there or other players... you'll need armor fittings to resist damage, melee or firearm ones to increase weapon damage, and others for boosting things like endurance recovery. Think of it like materia, a bit in comparison.

Pets

People who play MMO's like pets right? How about 3 types? Tamed, Genetically Engineered, and Robot.

Tamed - Find a baby, tame it, it's yours for 4 charges. Feed it, heal it when it loses a charge, watch it grow up over time. It loses all it's charges it's dead for good. Tamed pets can take days to finally raise to Alpha or Mature levels, so you'll probably get attached.
Name them by selecting them and /pet name all lower case with one space. (naming works for all pet types)

Genetically Engineered - This uses the Genetic Engineering crafting skill and lots of mats like DNA and tissue samples you'll get from killing monsters out in the field. You basically play god and create stacks of single use monsters that can eventually do things like heal you in combat.

Robot - This uses the Robotics crafting skill. I haven't made any myself, but I know it's a complex process to assemble one and you'll start off by making crap quality ones. Although, once made you can outfit them with fittings that improve their usefulness. There's tank/healer/and combat varieties.

Once replies are made and people ask questions I'll update the rest of the OP directly. For now, I think this is good.
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