New Wave of MMORTS Games

The term MMORTS used to refer to cheesy empire building Evony like games. I say cheesy, because at the moment there are easily 100+ browser based empire building MMOs like Travian, Caesary,Tribal Wars, War of Legends and hundreds more. These games, for some reason, are absurdly popular. All of these games are browser-based as well. This is all about to change though.

GamesCampus – the company behind MLB Dugout Heroes, Asda Story, Shot Online, Legend of Edda and numerous other games, launched a revolutionary new MMORTS called Soul Master. I say revolutionary because it’s actually client based, and get this – fun. It mixes action MMORPG elements with pikmin like strategy. The combat is fluid and well paced. The levels themselves feel a bit similar to Dragonica Online and Divine Souls – as players can run through each level multiple times under different difficulties. For some odd reason, this particular system of progression has become really popular. Fists of Fu from Outspark and even Vindictus from Nexon employ similar progression systems. I think Lunia from ijji was the first game to have stage based linear gameplay. Each stage is instanced. Luckily, the main town area acts as a social hub where players can grab quests, buy items and interact with others.

Soul Master is definitely going to shake things up as it’s actually an original game. It feels a bit like Divine Souls, but with a twist. It’s not just a straight up action MMORPG. Players have to utilize clever strategy if they expect to complete a level. Luckily, if a stage proves too difficult, players can party up with others to complete it. All of this should be very familiar to those who have played Dragonica Online or even GhostX from GameKiss to a degree – as in its core Soul Master is very similar to these action MMORPGs. It only really differences itself by mixing RTS components with its gameplay, which actually work really well and are quite fun.

Have you played Soul Master yet? If not, definitely give it a chance! It’s a fun game.

More Anime MMORPGs Coming Soon

A lot of new anime themed MMORPGs are coming out in the next few months. Many of them have been announced already and many of them are just starting their closed beta. August, 2010 has been a great month for free to play anime games! Gpotato announced Iris Online, which looks amazing. Looks like Bright Shadow from GamePot USA, except much brighter and more colorful. I personally love anime graphics in video games for some reason, so I’m definitely excited about Iris. Prior to Iris Online, gPotato only had Fly For Fun as an anime themed MMORPG and it’s been getting old. I mean, it’s a great game, but it’s really old now. Another new anime inspired MMORPG from gPotato that was announced recently is Prius Online. Netmarble is the company that publishes it in South Korea, so I’m surprised they’re not publishing it on their global portal, and instead, are letting gPotato publish it. I never really heard much about Prius Online, but I recently read an article on a news site that a couple in South Korea were so addicted to the game that they had forgotten to feed their child. The game must be good!

Kitsu Saga is another 3D anime MMORPG i’m looking forward to trying once it releases. The game is published by Aeria Games and was developed by the same company who also made Grand Fantasia – one of my favorite MMORPGs. Like Zentia and Dragon Oath, Kitsu Saga is supposed to be martial arts themed. I’m not crazy about the whole martial arts thing, but so long as the game is fun – that’s all that matters. The game is actually called JS Online in South Korea and its supposed to launch in north America sometime in late 2010.

I’ve been playing older MMORPGs like Secret of the Solstice and Fiesta Online from Outspark for a while. So seeing all these new MMORPGs being announced is great. Both Fiesta and Secret of the Solstice are solid games, but i’m looking to try something else. Mostly because I’ve played these games to death. I tried Fantasy Earth Zero from GamePot USA but couldn’t get into it. The same goes for Asda Story from GamesCampus. I’m really looking forward to some of these newer games though. Until they come out, I’ll probably kill some time playing some Lost Saga on OGPlanet and Soul Master. Both games are fairly new and incredibly fun. If you haven’t played them do give them a chance!

A look at Anime MMORPGs

Since most free to play MMORPGs are developed in the East, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many of them are Anime MMORPGs – visually speaking. In fact, most free to play games available here in the West through publishers like Aeria Games, OG Planet and Alaplaya are all developed in places like South Korea, China and Japan – where Anime is popular. To give you guys a better idea of where these MMOs come from, the most well known Korean MMORPG developers are Nexon (Think Vindictus and MapleStory) and Webzen (Think Soul of the Ultimate Nation). The most well known Chinese MMORPG developers are probably Perfect World Entertainment (Think Jade Dynasty and Battle of the Immortals) and ChangYou (Think Zentia and Dragon Oath). The biggest Japanese MMO developer is probably Square Enix with Final Fantasy 11 and maybe CyberStep with Getamped 2 and CosmicBreak.

Anyway, with so many anime inspired MMORPGs available from the super cute Luna Online to the more serious yet bright themed Cloud Nine, MMO gamers have a lot of choices available to them. In my opinion though the best anime MMORPG is probably MapleStory from Nexon. After that, other great anime inspired MMORPGs are Mabinogi, Fiesta Online, Secret of the Solstice and Grand Chase. I think more than half of the free to play MMORPGs out there are anime inspired. The first free to play MMORPG which I’ve played is Ragnarok Online from Gravity. Back when I played it, it wasn’t free to play, but I played on a private server. The game is free to play now, at least one one official server – Valkyrie. I’m actually not a fan of Japanese anime television / manga, but I still enjoy playing anime inspired games. I really love the art style – more so than realistic games actually. I mean, realistic MMORPGs like Karos Online and Sword 2 are good, but I just prefer the look and feel of anime inspired games more.

There are a lot of other anime MMORPGs which I didn’t mention here. If you know of any awesome ones that I didn’t bring up, leave their names in the comments below! I’m actually currently playing Grand Fantasia from Aeria Games and it’s a lot of fun. It’s definitely one of my favorites!

Dead Free MMORPGs

Recently two more free to play MMOs announced that they would be shutting down. Earth Eternal and The Chronicles of Spellborn. Earth Eternal was a browser based game by Sparkplay Media that played a bit like Runes of Magic and Allods Online. The game’s charm was that it offered a WoW alternative, but on the browser. The game was definitely a technological marvel, as it was one of the browser based games, aside from maybe FusionFall, which had great graphics. The game lasted less than a year, which is quite sad. The Chronicles of Spellborn on the other hand, was a failure from the get-go. The game was originally published as a pay to play game by its developer, but it went bankrupt within 3 months of the game’s release. Since then, Acclaim Games picked up the service as ran it as a free to play game for about a year. Acclaim Games never attempted to monetize the game, so it was guaranteed to fail. The game’s skill system was interesting and somewhat resembled Mytheon from UTV True Games. Both games never managed to attract a very high playerbase. No matter, it’s always sad to see an MMORPG shut down.

Aside from these two MMORPGs, several other MMORPGs were shut down in the last month. Project Torque from Aeria Games and Three Kingdoms: The Battle Begins from Uforia both announced that they would shut down in August 2010. Project Torque will be re-launched as Heat Online by another company, so that’s good, but Three Kingdoms: The Battle Begins will be gone for good. No worries though, as gamers can check out Heroes of Three Kingdoms, Kingdom Heroes or any one of the other Three Kingdoms inspired MMORPGs.

Even with the announcements of these games closing down, free to play enthusiasts should remain excited about the genre. It seems like for every free to play MMORPG to shut down, there are 5 more to take its place. By the time these games shut down, MicroVolts, Legendary Champions, King of Kings 3, Legends of Edda and many other upcoming MMORPGs will take their place. So even though games are shutting down, more new games are being announced and launching. Just like everything else, bad games will shut down and new ones will replace them. In the long run, the free to play space will be bigger and have better games. Why am I so confident? Because big Western firms are starting to embrace the genre. I played Company of Heroes Online the other day from THQ Relic and was very impressed with it. I was also super impressed with Need for Speed World Online from Electronic

So Yeah. Older less popular games will shut down, but these dead MMORPGs will be replaced with newer, better games.

Spicing up old MMO Ideas

I played Land of Chaos Online from Alaplaya the other day and I have to admit, I’m pleasantly surprised. The game itself still needs polish but the idea behind the game is quite awesome. It’s inspired by aeon of strife games like Avalon Heroes and League of Legends, but instead of a standard top down RTS style gameplay, Land of Chaos Online features action packed gameplay with a third person camera. It blends FPS, RTS and RPG elements – much like Savage 2. Like I said, the game still needs a lot of work, more characters, and skills but even as is, the game is quite fun. Each hero in the game has 10 skills. That’s incredible. Especially considering DotA and HoN heroes have four skills. The variety is intense.

Land of Chaos Online isn’t the only game spicing up old formulas. Runes of Magic was one of the first mega popular free MMORPGs to do this. It took the World of Warcraft formula, and spiced it up by adding a dual classing system. Yeah, so even though Runes of Magic is a WoW Clone, it’s an amazing one. The game’s dual classing system gives it so much depth. Frogster did a brilliant job with the game. It’s much better than Talisman Online, Allods Online and the other WoW clones out there. The game’s soundtrack is also quite nice. I believe the game released its third major content update, so Frogster has done a swell job keeping the game fresh. I love how they took the WoW idea and spiced it up. The dual classing system is awesome. Sure, it’s not exactly original, as Guild Wars from NCSoft also had dual classing, but Runes of Magic was the first free to play MMORPG with such a system.

Next up is Wolfteam – the MMOFPS developed by Softnyx. Wolfteam took the basic MMOFPS gameplay from Sudden Attack and made it original. It did this by giving players the ability to transform into powerful melee wolves at anytime. Sure, the game is still largely an FPS – meaning most of the time it makes more sense to have your gun equipped, but giving players the option of turning into a wolf adds another layer of gameplay to Wolfteam. In the MMOFPS genre, this extra layer of depth means quite a bit, especially since all of these MMOFPS games in their core (Mercenary Wars, Operation 7, Soldier Front, etc) are all the same.

Know of any other free to play game that took an old idea, but spiced it up? Post it in the comments below!

MMORPGs on the Horizon – August, 2010

There are a bunch of cool free to play games on the horizon that I’m looking forward to trying. I don’t know if I’ll stick to any of these games, but August is starting to look like an awesome month for MMORPGs! The first game on my list to try in August, 2010 is the elephant in the room – Vindictus from Nexon. The game is scheduled to begin its closed beta in mid-August and I was lucky enough to get into the closed beta. I’ve been a fan of Nexon’s games since the release of MapleStory back in like 2004. I’ve also played Mabinogi quite a bit and still play Combat Arms regularly. I think it’s actually safe to say Combat Arms is the most successful free MMOFPS game in the U.S. I know Sudden Attack is super popular in Asia, but not so much in the U.S. In fact, Sudden Attack is considered the “Counter-Strike of Asia”. There are so many tournaments for it!

Anyway, I’m getting a bit distracted. I also plan on trying Divine Souls and Fists of Fu from Outspark. Both games went into closed beta in mid to late July, but I suspect they will both begin their open betas in August. I didn’t want to play either game too much in closed beta, as there will almost certainly be a wipe before open beta. Another upcoming MMORPG that looks awesome is King of Kings 3 from Gamigo. I actually made sure King of Kings 3 would be available to U.S. Users before I got excited over it, as Martial Empires from Gamigo announced they would ban U.S. Ips when it launched. So I wanted to make sure King of Kings 3 would be playable from the U.S. And it will be. I’m looking forward to playing it because it apparently has excellent PvP. The game’s guild system is awesome and it player housing as well, something most games just don’t have.

On the “MMO” front I plan on trying MicroVolts when its closed beta begins on August 12. A lot of sites are giving away closed betas keys for it, and I got mine a few days ago. I’ve always been a fan of shooting games, so I suspect I’ll like MicroVolts, especially since it has the whole Team Fortress 2 cartoony look to it. I also played a bit of FreeJack last month when it began its closed beta, but I’m hoping it fully releases this month, so I can play it some more. FreeJack is cool because it’s one of the only racing MMOs on foot. Think Tales Runner, but with more awesome graphics. The tracks are awesome and there are a bunch of little features in the game that make it fun.

I think I covered just about everything that’s coming out in August, 2010. If I missed anything let me know in the comments.