Last friday I was invited to attend the Forsaken World Philippines press launch. We were introduced to Cubinet’s latest fantasy 3D MMORPG. We were presented with game features and whatnot as a way to present to us what Forsaken World is all about. Among it’s most notable features is the presence of the Kindred race that can only become the exclusive Vampire class.

Aside from it;s game features, we were also presented with the cash shop system which focuses more on fashion and pots rather than player advantage to those who spent money playing the game.

Currently CBT has ended and there has been no announcement yet regarding the game’s OBT. Please do stay tuned on updates regarding the game!

If you want to know more about Forsaken World you can visit the Facebook page or the game’s site.

Week Three stands for Three Kingdoms, a very famous topic for Asian MMORPGs everywhere with the warfare, the strategy, and about years of turmoil and chaos in 3^rd Century AD China. Many writers have made stories about these brave heroes, many movies, television and comics have recreated scenes (exaggerated or not), and today, we will put in three Three Kingdoms-themed Online games! (And these are legit Three Kingdoms-based games, not exactly slapping in Chinese names in random NPC’s and calling it a Three Kingdoms game.)

Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a very popular theme for many Asian-inspired video games (next to the Warring States of Japan in 16th Century AD.), is based on actual events which include honor, loyalty, ambition, and lots of backstabbing and bloodthirsty fighting. Aside from the hints of a huge bias to the Shu Kingdom, these mini-reviews and experiences feature my love for history and my impatience playing all of them in order to achieve true victory in the battlefield.

Except when crossing swords with every interpretation of this guy.

Chi Bi Online (aka Red Cliff, Heroes of the Three Kingdoms)

Country of Origin: China

Genre: Historical MMORPG

Company of Origin: Beijing Perfect World

Distributors: Perfect World (Global), Cubizone (Asia)

Current Gameplay Status: Dropped

Chi Bi Online, “Chi Bi” after the scenic location in China where a famous battle took place back during the Three Kingdoms Era, is Perfect World’s attempt to make a historically themed game using the old Perfect World engine.

I’ll tell you this. When this game was still Open Beta, I have to download an installer in order to play this without any interruptions (internet is bad here at the time) and then I got this weird message that Windows was shutting down unexpectedly. Every time I try to open the installer, it just shuts me down… then again, everytime I attempt to open anything it just shuts down. I did fix it, and decided to play the game. Took about more than 2 days just to find out what is wrong with the auto-shutdowns.

Like this, only the messge in the box was more annoying like “LOL YOU HAS VIRUS”

So in this game, you get to choose two “races”: the common Yan, the people of the Han, and the Miao, representing the Nanman barbarians in the south (If you know the characters of Meng Huo and his wife Zhu Rong, these Miaos serve under them), with “Miao” being the Hmong dialect term for “free people”. Weaponry is many in this game, raging from melee, ranged weaponry, and even magical weapons which are unlocked every update.

It will give you strange impulses to create ROTK Original Characters with these beauties.

Since this is a Perfect World-made game, I’ll just be reviewing with the campaigns and not the gameplay. You know what I feel about PW’s gameplay system. But I have a problem with their EXP System where you yourself have to manually level up yourself when the green EXP Bar flashes.

The only game I know where EXP is done manually. Seriously.

Campaign battles are played slightly different from other Perfect World-titled games, since they are stage-based to match certain Three Kingdoms Battles. In other words, you fight alongside various Three Kingdoms Generals that is fitting within the scenario (sampling this is the player fighting Zhao Yun in the Zhao Yun’s Rescue Quest, and failing it when Zhao Yun gets routed by Cao Cao) and complete various tasks until the scenario ends. Though these scenarios are unlocked at a later level, and it really depends on the Kingdom you are serving in by means of reputation points.

Kingdom Heroes

Country of Origin: Taiwan

Genre: Historical MMORPG

Company of Origin: Userjoy

Distributors: AeriaGames (Global)

Current Gameplay Status: Dropped

How can a Three Kingdoms-inspired MMORPG with both naval and land battles, a pet system that replaces animals with soldiers, fricking siege wars complete with siege engines and weapons, and a kingdom-wide battle system, end up being a bit boring and forgettable at the same time?

This game has faced a lot of problems containing dated graphics, incredibly horrible translations, a laggy server whenever fighting in said grand-scale siege battles, and a very slow, draggy beginning level-up that do take forever to at least get through the more interesting parts of the game. I think that’s the problem with some Three Kingdoms-based games: They want to stall you before they give you the really good parts that History has brought us!

On seconds thought… boats!

The GMS and friends system weren’t helping much either, and guilds are possibly the only way you can ensure victory to the kingdom you serve. Between you and me, I’m not a competitive person (I’m more completist, actually). If you guys do love Mass-scaled PVP games complete with naval battles and siege weapons, it’s a pretty decent game, but I warn you of the really terrible (and confusing) lags and translations.

And yes, I am aware of TS Online, but I didn’t play the Philippine server version nor understood TS Online 2 because I was too late.

Dynasty Warriors BB (aka Dynasty Warriors Online)

Country of Origin: Japan

Genre: Tactical-Action MMORPG

Company of Origin: Koei-Tecmo

Distributors: AeriaGames (Global)

Current Gameplay Status: Playing

Well, folks. Your Koei fanatic appears with Dynasty Warriors Online, a famous Koei MMO based on the “hack and slash” game of the same name.

I did wait for this since its Japanese release on 2005, and it started as a Pay-to-play game, but it did grew into the “free with item mall” format that still exist today. Yeah, every young Koei fanatic has its dream to get the hands on this Japanese-only game at the time. And I’ve been watching videos of those lucky enough to understand Japanese and posted their gameplay videos. But it was a simple time where the PS3 has yet to be released and their latest Warriors game was Dynasty Warriors 5.

5 years later, AeriaGames, a MMO Company that distributed a few pretty decent titles such as Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine, Twelve Sky 2, and Shaiya, has announced the release of Dynasty Warriors Online in English and accessible to players around the world.

Well, it’s wasn’t much, since Koei’s games were already past the PS2 Era that the game’s engine provided. No Renbus, no EX Modes, no weapon shifts in-game, those types.

The game is pretty simple: You make a character; choose which force among Wu, Wei, or Shu you like to join and maybe later which Dynasty Warriors character you want to serve. Then you participate in stage-based battles against other players from an opposing faction in order to gain Honor. The more Honor points you have, the more you are entitled to take a Promotion test. Pass it by killing a number of enemies, take a couple of bases by fulfilling whatever challenge the base gives you, and later on fight against your favorite Dynasty Warriors character and get promoted in rank in order to fight tougher, more difficult, and more rewarding battles. Yes, level numbers are replaced with soldier ranks!

But that does not stop the players to wait in the ever-dragging waiting room for allies and opponents.

Battles were also pretty different in this game, from a weekly Campaign mode which consists of 24 players battling against another faction in exchange for territory, to a more common melee mode where 4 players fight against four other players in a rival faction using the power of motives and objectives:

• Capture - Capture all the enemy bases, or all the bases on the battlefield
• Defeat - Defeat the certain number of troops in the time limit
• Confront - Defeat 10 enemy players
• Search - Bring 10 pieces of treasure back to one of your bases or supply base

Long story short, it is a Dynasty Warriors game (Most likely similar to Destiny Mode in the early Xtreme Legends expansion packs) only you can play it… ONLINE! Yeah I got nothing.

Tune in… after Toycon (since I’ll be busy with digital art school this week) when we will be doing some cute cartoony-based games (that are incredibly playable, mind you.)

… with more cute.

One of my many interests as a gamer are the Online Roleplaying Games, particularly those that I can simply download for free and play for all good and lovely reasons (legally and without the full use of a torrent.) MMOs became a part of my life and I ended up getting full opportunity to tell you stories and review about them in this new segment I call: MMO Shenanigans.

(Okay, I don’t have any decent 3DS Games as of yet and the next System Update will be at the start of June. Happy now?)

But I do have a strange love for Free MMORPGs. Once in a while we get diamonds in the rough that attempt to support themselves through free donations and Item Malls, but make up its free status with excellent gameplay, community, music, graphics, and an intriguing theme that just makes you keep on going and grinding. While the rest of these games have a ridiculous premise to the point that I would tell the tales of suckiness to my friends and say, “Yeah, I used to play <so and so game>, and I hate it.”

This new segment will be composed of 3 mini reviews and/or experience stories of various MMORPGs that I have played during the course of the… many years that I did so. Also, some updates will consist of a certain theme (Sci-Fi, Asian, Superheroes and whatnot) that makes an MMORPG a diverse group that can be played for all ages and people.

So without further ado, here is MMO Shenanigans.

Silkroad Online

Country of Origin: Korea

Genre: Historical MMORPG

Company of Origin: Joymax

Distributors: Joymax (International), Level-Up Games (Philippines)

Current Gameplay Status: Dropped

Silkroad Online is a pretty old MMORPG game that tells and relives on the development of the elusive Silk Road trade that happened in 7^th Century AD. The game starts off with choosing one of the two countries that were highly involved with the Silk Road trade: China and Europe. And depending on the country you started in, you get different skills and attributes (China focuses on Charged Elemental weaponry, while Europe focuses on a Job-like system that look a bit like Ragnarok Online’s own.) You then get to choose one out of the many preset characters with additional customization of armor and weapons as well as height and weight. One of the many things I remembered about this game was its captivating P2P system that involves the player into various jobs that were unique in their own way: traders that transport various items from town to town, hunters who protect traders from thieves, and thieves who attempt to steal the Traders’ items before reaching its destination.

Back in the day, Silkroad used to have very serious typos that were not addressed until a few years later. Till then, forum members consider the weapon above as a “glavie,” glaive’s more enthusiastic variation.

This game had an interesting history back in my high school days because this was the first MMORPG that I played with an Oriental/Asian theme that I liked so much. With this as my starting point I expected the same in my other future MMOs. The problem I did have in this game was that as time flew by and updates go on, the bot player population increased dramatically to the point where every town and server I went to, there will always be a million advertisement scams that try to convey your real world cash with Silkroad’s Item Mall Currency (thus, many of the Main website’s constant updates of banned bots and emergency server inspections.) There was also a time where Silkroad doesn’t even let their players pass the log-in screen due to the high bot infestation that ended up clogging the server population limit.

I wasted the my whole summer vacation with this log-in screen in my final years of Silkroading. I have cursed the bots ever since.

So yeah, Silkroad was also the first MMO I knew that had me learn the MMORPG-local term known as “nerfing.” But that does not stop me from attempting to redownload this game and checking if things there got better or worse.

Update: Well… at least some problems were fixed… The bot infestation still continues rampantly, and I have yet to see the upcoming Arabian/Islam country update the Korean Silkroad was about to show everyone. When the new episode will include the Islam episodes, please tell me.

FORSAKEN WORLD

Country of Origin: China

Genre: Fantasy MMORPG

Company of Origin: Beijing Perfect World

Distributors: Perfect World Entertainment

Current Gameplay Status: Still Playing

Forsaken World tells a tale of the hero from one of many races: Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Kindreds, and Stonemen, with their various adventures fighting against the Strom Legion and their King and gain godly powers or something. While kicking monster butt and finishing main quests, you also gain access to various jobs that gain an edge in future battles to come.

The problems I had with this game were obvious when I first saw it: The game is pretty much Perfect World of Warcraft. In other word, the setting is based on a more Westernized mythology with dwarves, elves, vampiric kindreds, and a Western Zodiac sign system (as Perfect World was known for its more Chinese-based MMORPGs) while the content is what you expect in a Perfect World game. In other words, if you have played Forsaken world once, you’ve probably played all of the MMORPG’s Perfect World International offers you in one download.

The green lettering in the Quest Info serves as an auto-tracker, making this game a lot easier. Thanks, Perfect World!

Another thing that bugged me with the game was on how ridiculously easy the game was with the tracker system attached to the quest lists and the many EASY, short quests and little rewards that is served to you in a pinch. Just click on the green highlighted name on your quest list details and away you go! I got to about level 20 in at least 3 hours of playing.

Though I am slightly relieved that Toni Gonzaga didn’t attempt to sing any cover song here… so it’s good. I haven’t played Perfect World in forever, and the graphics and concept designs are pretty nice for a game made by Perfect World so it’s not a total, complete loss.

And as long as the Vampire Class ain’t sparkling, it’ll be alright.

WAKFU

Country of Origin: France

Genre: Turn-based MMORPG

Company of Origin: Ankama Studio

Distributors: Ankama Studio (Global), Square Enix (America)

Current Gameplay Status: On Hold

Wakfu, the free-to-play sequel to the game Dofus (which is Pay-to-play), brings us to the old days of Final Fantasy Tactics where you (along with a party member or two) take turns fighting against monsters with the power of strategy while giving access to many professions that can give the game a lot of possiblities. This game has brought pride to European (particularly French) players to the point that it made its own television show based on it.

Pretty much a mix of Runescape and FFT, only with a cute, cartoony disposition.

Set a thousand years after Dofus, it tells of heroes of many races (mostly elven and anthro), abilities and skills who rise above the ruins to repair and cure the now divided World of Twelve… with (as the site’s plot says) “Llve and a good sense of humor”, while mastering the powerful energy of the game’s universe known as “Wakfu”.

I do enjoy the cartoony feel of the game and it takes a lot of skill (and balls) for a French company to make a game this refreshing to look at, yet in times with the lack of a quest system that one may feel confused on where you will go or how far the player can progress.  And since this is the Open Beta version and is currently in development, a handful of bugs and lack of facilities there of can make this game both questionable yet still reasonable due to the game’s initial stages. Also, the players in the game’s server I played on speak and/or are French, so in other words, I am totally out of place the moment I have played this game and joined my first party.

Sacre Bleu, Le Kung-Fu Panda!

So here ends the first MMO Shenanigans. Tune in next week where I will give short reviews of Wuxia (Martial Arts)-Based MMOS!

• Lilium
• Rukia9

Game/s Played:

• Final Fantasy 5-12
• Chrono Cross
• Xenosaga Episode II-III
• Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2
• Ar Tonelico
• Brave Story
• Samurai Warriors 1 & 2 (includes both Xtreme Legends)
• Fable II
• Obscure II
• Resident Evil 2 & 3
• Bully
• Odin Sphere
• Left 4 Dead
• Left 4 Dead II
• Audition
• Perfect World
• O2Jam
• Tekken 1-6
• Soul Calibur IV
• Gears of War 2 and the list goes on XD

Game/s currently playing:

• Final Fantasy 7 (PSP Re-release)
• Final Fantasy 13
• Bayonetta
• Assassin’s Creed II
• Burnout: Dominator

What’s your main game?

• Left 4 Dead, I will always prefer the first game. I like how they gave character to Zoey, she’s into gaming as well.

How did you start playing video games?

• It all started with my FAMICOM. I felt cool back then having one. XD

What was your first game?

• Super Mario Bros.

Your proudest gaming moment?

• I was with my college friends in the arcades, I borrowed 1 token because I was being frugal that day. I played this game called “Rumble Fish”; I was going through the stages smoothly, friends were amused by all this they started challenging me and they couldn’t win. FYI, it was my first time playing Rumble Fish. I reached the final boss but was defeated I think I won one round but it was all in vain, hehe. I’m proud of this ‘cause it all happened with 1 token, I’m not really an arcades person.

Game Affiliations: (guilds, clans, forums etc.)

• Pixel Otaku (long ago was FFWorlds)
• I founded the once Friendster group called “RPG Masters”.

Preferred Game Genre: (mmorpg, fps, rpg, action, etc.)

• Definitely RPGs! I’ve always wanted games that deliver an in depth storyline which is commonly found in Role Playing Games.

Preferred Gaming Platform: (PC, consoles or handeld)

• It is quite a tie between consoles and handheld; consoles because it’s worth it, every month its bound to have a new game released, most of the games that I’ve been very fond of I’ve played in consoles. Handheld, well simply because of the fact that it is very handy, you can anywhere as long as the situation allows you to; my PSP has become of the things I’ve become accustomed to bringing with me.

If you were given a choice for a free console what would you choose from the three? Wii, Ps3 or Xbox360?

• PS3! Why?! Well…first off, I don’t have one. I’m a 360 owner. I’d like to see what the PS3 has to offer, with all the great reviews and feedbacks it’s been getting, I can browse the internet, there definitely is something with that console and it’ll be a great addition to my Playstation collection. I would also like to try MGS.

How about if you were given a free handheld what would you choose? Nintendo DS or PSP?

• NDS! I’ve yet to play with it so it would be really great if I had one!

Are you more of an online or offline gamer?

• I’m more of an offline gamer; I haven’t played MMOs for a long time.

Let’s say you were given the choice to change the world into one of the games you played before (or you are currently playing), what game would it be?

• Definitely Final Fantasy 8, I really liked the whole school concept. It would be great to actually have a school like Balamb Garden,  I really liked how they designed it, makes you envious of Squall The towns in the game are also great, if I’m to live there, I’d live in Balamb City because it seems like a peaceful place.

If you can change yourself into one of the many heroines in any game, who would you change into?

• Mitsuru Kirijo from Persona 3; she’s one of my ultimate favorite heroines. Mitsuru’s character really amuses me, I like her snobbish I’ll kick your arse if you get too close personality. Plus, she lives in Japan and points a gun on her head to summon her Persona. It’s pure win.

If you would be given a power from a game character, what kind of power would you ask for? Why and what will you do with it?

• Sonic’s ability to run fast! Haha, I would really like to have that to avoid the heavy traffic I usually stumble upon, I wouldn’t  need a car anymore I’ll just grab my boyfriend then and we’ll head off to school! XD

What are your other hobbies aside from gaming?

• My boyfriend and I are fond of web designing; I’m currently learning how to do things.  I’m also into graphic designing; I update my DeviantArt whenever I have something new. I like learning new things especially when they’re related to computers. I enjoy watching movies, tv shows, J-dramas with my boyfriend.

Why do you think pinay gamers rock?

• Because we can kick just as much arses

What’s your message to all the gamers out there?

• Video games will never fail to entertain you, but it should be done in moderation. I think you’ll be able to enjoy playing video games even more when you have nothing to worry about school, so school tasks always comes first. School and video games are two things that will never agree with each other. There’s time for school and there will always be time for gaming ^__^